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THE 
STORY OF ST. PAUL 


A Comparison of Acts and Cpisties 


BY 


BENJAMIN WISNER BACON 


PROFESSOR OF NEW TESTAMENT CRITICISM AND EXEGESIS IN 
YALE UNIVERSITY 





’ BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
' HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 
Che Viiberside Press, Cambridge 
1904 





COPYRIGHT 1904 BY BENJAMIN 





PREFACE 


Ir is a providential characteristic of God’s written 
revelation that it presents the record in twofold, 
threefold, or even fourfold form, without effort to 
conceal the discrepancies due to the varying points 
of view of fallible reporters. Polemic interest seizes 
upon this fact to argue on the one side from the 
discrepancies against the veracity, on the other that 
“in the mouth of two or three witnesses shall every 
word be established.” Only the tendency has been 
so extreme to establish every word as to lose sight 
of the value of divergences. 

For eighteen centuries of polemics the supreme 
interest of the Church in comparing biblical paral- 
lels has been harmonistic. Everything has been 
done to obliterate the last trace of difference. In 
the earlier time transcribers did not scruple to as- 
similate text with text, going so far as to meet the 
taunt of discrepant genealogies of Jesus by substi- 
tuting in Luke the pedigree of Matthew. In the 
fourth century the Syrian church only escaped the 
actual superseding of the ‘separate’’ four gospels 
by the composite “ Diatessaron” of Tatian through 
the forcible intervention of Theodoret, Bishop of 


} 


vi : PREFACE 


Cyrrhus. Later harmonizers were compelled to con- 
fine themselves to interpretation, until traditional 
exegesis had completed the work of obliteration. 
But criticism, lower and higher, documentary and 
historical, if scientific, is devoid of polemic interest. 
Its object is historical, and for that reason it places 
appreciation of differences before harmonization. 
The wider the variation in standpoint of honest 
witnesses, the stronger the general corroboration, 
and the broader the base-line for scientifie determi- 
nation of that historical ultimate which no one 
man, or one age even, is competent to describe. 
For one century criticism has been patiently seek- 
ing to restore the marks of difference that the har- 
monists of nineteen centuries have sought by every 
means to efface. The vast preponderant mass of 
the heretical and extra-canonical witness has been 
irrecoverably destroyed. Only a fragment survives 
here and there, and the incompletely obliterated 
divergences within the canon itself. To seek to 
undo the work of harmonizers who thought they 
did God service by improving on the record as he 
gave it, first by tampering with the text, after- 
wards by a warped interpretation, is inevitably to 
incur suspicion if not odium. That is a small mat- 
ter to men who know that God’s word is just the 
unvarnished truth, and who search the Seriptures, 
not as the scribes and Pharisees, who thought that 


PREFACE vii 


in them they had eternal life, but because these 
testify of Christ, and through them they come unto 
him and find life indeed. 

The criticism which underlies the present volume 
is based on the conviction that a hearty and sym- 
pathetic appreciation of the differences in our two 
sources for the life of Paul must precede attempts 
at combination. The tradition as embodied in the 
Acts toward the close of the first century for pur- 
poses quite other than those of the critical historian, 
by an unknown hand from unknown sources, under 
circumstances but dimly understood, must be ap- 
preciated by itself and for itself. Into comparison 
with this must be brought the letters, with their 
indirect but unimpeachable testimony. The temp- 
tation to forced reconciliations must be resisted in 
the light of their past disservice. Such larger 
harmony as results from simple-hearted recognition 
of agreements and disagreements alike, taking its 
doctrine of inspiration from the facts and not vice 
versa, is the reward we seek. But what little we 
know of religious ideas and conditions outside the 
canonical sources must also be brought into consid- 
eration. It is no detriment to Christianity that it 
is not a product of Judaism alone. The more we 
can learn of its roots in Gentile soil the better. 

The lectures were made purposely as untechnical 
as possible. They were prepared as a “ historical 





4 ei gaa 
be a ip h | 


viii PREFACE 


and literary study” for mixed audiences, whose 
knowledge of the Bible was for the most part un- 
critical, and are printed substantially as delivered 
in the two “‘ University Extension ” courses at Prov- 
idence, R. I., and New Haven, Conn., in the spring 
and autumn, 1903. A few footnotes constitute sub- 
stantially the only additions. To transform these 
semi-popular lectures on some of the results of 
critical study into a scientific treatise with adequate 
presentation of scientific opinion on all disputed 
points, would be to rob them of their essential 
character, if not to overload the work for the pub- 
lic. There will be better hope of the welcome pre- 
dicted for them in the kind assurances of auditors 
who have asked their publication, if they go forth 


as they are. 
Bensamin W. Bacon. 


New Haven, July 5, 1904. 


LECTURE I 
PREAMBLE 


Tue historical and literary study of the life and 
letters of St. Paul is the scientific line of approach 
to one of the supreme problems of history: the 
relation of Christianity, as we know it, to the reli- 
gious consciousness of Jesus, and to his life and 
teaching. 

Christianity, as we know it, is Pauline Christian- 
ity. Every one knows, and nearly every one for- 
gets, that before Paul’s conversion there was no 
idea in the Church of a new world-religion, with 
the Incarnation and the Atonement as cardinal 
doctrines. Leave out the Fourth Gospel, dating 
from early in the second century, with its largely 
Pauline interpretation of Jesus’ teaching, and the 
documents which give us our picture of primitive 
Christianity, post-Pauline though they are, remain 
marvelously uncolored by the current doctrinal 
system. They reveal a different type. Synoptic 
tradition in the historical books is untheological 
in the main. The Petrine speeches of Acts fairly 
represent early preaching. But these give us no- 
thing of the preéxistence or divinity of Christ ; 


Lidar): 
VE 


4 THE STORY OF ST. PAUL 


nothing of Christ as the spiritual Adam, redeem- 
ing the race from an original Fall. They have no- 
thing of the Pauline antithesis of flesh and spirit, 
natural inability and divine indwelling, death to 
sin, and resurrection with Christ in regeneration. 

In the Petrine preaching Jesus is the Prophet 
like unto Moses, “ raised up” according to promise 
“from among his brethren.” He is the Son of 
David, sent already once in humble guise to turn 
Israel to repentance. Put to death as foretold by 
the prophets, God has revealed him as the Christ 
that is to come by the resurrection. Soon he will 
return to establish the kingdom of his father David 
in more than earthly glory. Such is pre-Pauline 
Christianity, not unaffected by contemporary mys- 
ticism, but still in substance of the Old Testament 
type. 

That, however, is not Christianity as we know it. 
That is messianistic Judaism, a national, not- yet 
a universal religion, however reformed and purified 
by the influence of Jesus. Unless, then, we are pre- 
pared to let go either the historic preaching of 
Jesus and the Twelve, or else the theoretical Paul- 
ine development of this earlier type which makes 
Christianity as we know it, we must find some 
common ground between the national and the world- 
religion. 

But how shall we bridge the chasm between our 








PREAMBLE 5 


faith as it is, and the primitive Nazarene messian- 
ism, except by understanding Paul? The mere 
fact that his letters are the earliest documents of 
the faith, the nearest approach the New Testament 
can furnish to contemporary authentic records, 
bearing the signature of a historical personage, and 
substantially unquestioned as to genuineness and 
date, is of tremendous importance to every mind 
familiar with the methods of historical research. 
The familiar order of our New Testament canon 
— Gospels, Acts, Pauline Epistles — unavoidably 
promotes the idea that the historical narratives 
came first. We are obliged to stop and reflect be- 
fore we recall that there are no contemporary records 
of the beginnings of our faith, that the first light 
we have is a dozen letters, unconsciously reflecting 
by their chance allusions the contemporary institu- 
tional life and ideas in their formative stage. The 
Synoptic story represents the unwritten tradition, 
not as it originally was, but in a form assumed 
after it had been moulded and assimilated by these 
same institutions and ideas in their maturity ; so 
that, however remarkably uncontaminated we find 
them, for general substance, we are yet compelled, 
as the first step toward a really historical knowledge 
of the faith which we hold, to draw a distinct line 
between Pauline and pre-Pauline Christianity. We 
must keep them apart in our minds, and then, hav- 


6 THE STORY OF ST. PAUL 


ing understood them as well as we ean separately, 
try to understand them in their reciprocal relation. 
That is the principal significance of the problem 
we are dealing with. 

But why not rest satisfied with the traditional 
accounts as they stand? Why seek for a historical 
nexus with the past? 

It is the necessary fate of the historian, ancient or 
modern, to be always behind the times. Nothing is 
more important to him than the beginnings of great 
movements, the early years of great men. And 
yet nobody realized in those early years that man 
or movement was destined to the place in history 
subsequently occupied. So the story of the early 
years is always having to be made up later, as best 
it can, from fragmentary recollection, often dis- 
torted by the disposition to see in the beginnings 
what transpired in the end. It is marvelous, I say, 
considering that the mother church was practically 
annihilated in the second Jewish rebellion (132- 
135 A. D.), how slight the measure of distortion is. 
Considering that Christianity became preponder- 
antly a Greek-speaking, Gentile religion before the 
writing of any one of the historical books of the 
New Testament, and that by the end of the first 
century its original Jewish adherents were scarcely 
more than a dwindling sect soon to be cast out en- 
tirely as heretical, it is marvelous that so fair a 


f 


PREAMBLE 7 


presentation of pre-Pauline Christianity as actually 
survives in Synoptic story should be accessible to 
us. And yet discrimination is certainly necessary 
in reading the Synoptic story. All three of these 
evangelists belong to the broader world-church, 
principally Pauline and Gentile in their time. They 
would not have written in Greek if they had not 
meant their narratives for this Gentile church, and 
the only three Aramaic gospel writings of which 
we have any knowledge disappeared from general 
use in the second century. The most important of 
them, a collection of the teachings of Jesus, which 
has given its name to our first gospel, was known 
only through tradition as a relic of the past, already 
superseded by Greek writings, when Papias was a 
young man in the early years of the second century. 
The earliest of our Synoptic evangelists wrote after 
the death of the Apostle who could have given an 
orderly account of Jesus’ life, and consequently, as 
the Church reports, was unable to give a correct 
order. The latest acknowledges that the historical 
order is lost. Doctrinally, too, these writers repre- 
sent the post-Pauline time. On all the essential 
points of Pauline doctrine, Christ as the universal 
Redeemer of humanity from the curse of sin, aboli- 
tion of the Law and of the prerogative of Israel, 
the kingdom of God as not something to be restored 
to Israel according to “ the oath which he sware to 


8 THE STORY OF ST. PAUL 


Abraham our father,” but as man’s reconciliation 


to God, and the brotherhood of the race, the evan- 


gelists take the Pauline view as a matter of course. 

Considering, I say, their date and standpoint, 
our Gospels are surprisingly little affected by the 
changed ideas and conditions; they preserve to a 
remarkable degree the type of apostolic preaching 
from which their authors were separated by the im- 
mense gulf which divides European from Asiatic, 
Hellene from Jew, Greek speech from Aramaic, the 
Jewish world before the destruction of Jerusalem 
from the Greco-Roman after the downfall of the 
Jewish nationality. But we should be very far 
from understanding Christianity as it is, if we had 


only the Synoptic story. Both its factors must be | 


understood, as well in separate as in their combined 
form. We must understand Christianity genetically 
if we wish to really understand it, and its genesis 
is twofold. To ascertain the earliest form of gospel 
tradition and leave out the accessions of Pauline 
and post-Pauline development, is to put asunder 
what God has joined together. The Jewish and the 
Gentile factor must both be studied in their origins. 

We may drink water to be refreshed without 
knowing anything of chemistry. So we may profit 
by Christianity and know nothing of its origins. In- 
deed, we must beware of the false notion that it 
consists merely of its two factors added together. 


' 


) 


! 


PREAMBLE ~ 9 


Water is something more than oxygen plus hy- 
drogen. Christianity is something more than the 
religion of the Orient plus the philosophy of the 
Occident, something more than the teachings of 
Jesus, the prophet of Nazareth and martyr-Messiah 
of Judaism, plus the theology of Paul the Grzeo- 
Roman Pharisee. All the same it is an immense 
advantage to know the chemical composition of 
water, and it is also an immense advantage to know 
the component elements of our religion and theology. 

To do this there is but one method. We must 
lay hold upon that primitive tradition our evangel- 
ists have on the whole so faithfully preserved, and 
over against it we must trace the development and 
history of the man who admittedly was the first 
to supply the infant religion with a theology, and 
plant it as a new world-religion on Greco-Roman 
soil. We must then use this history to understand 
that system’ of thought which Paul made the mould 
of all his acquisitions, whether from his earlier train- 
ing or from Christian sources, and which through 
him more than any other became the mould of 
Christianity as we now have it. Both in the actual 
development of doctrine and the relative date of 
documentary evidence/ Paul is the middle link be- 
tween Jesus the Prophet of Nazareth and Galilean 
Messiah, and the Christ of modern Christendom. 
What have we, then, whereby to understand Paul? 


10 THE STORY OF ST. PAUL 
We have two sources. First: A very unequally 


or more after Paul’s death. It is not a biography 
“of Paul. It tells practically nothing of his early 
life, next to nothing of two thirds of his career 
as an apostle ; it expands to great fullness on a few 
scenes of the years 55-60 A. D., and then leaves us 
absolutely in the dark as to the Apostle’s fate. On 
the one hand it is disappointingly incomplete, and 
its date and the purpose of the author who gives it 
such, that in certain parts, especially the earlier 
period, it is from the critical point of view quite 
unhistorical, for it comes into fundamental collision 
with Paul’s own explicit and emphatic declarations. 
On the other hand, this Lucan story of Paul’s career 
is of the utmost value and of the highest degree 
of historical trustworthiness, because upon just the 
snatches of his later career selected by the author 
of Acts for full treatment we have the broad, full 
daylight afforded by the actual diary of a traveling 
companion. In Acts xvi. 10-18, the source known 
as the ‘“* We-source,” or, as Professor Ramsay calls 
it, the “ Travel-document,” comes in to cover the 
journey of some Christian companion who traveled 
with Paul from Troas to Philippi, and spent a few 
days or weeks with him there (in all perhapsa , 








¥ 


PREAMBLE 11 


fortnight) about the year 49. Five years later, at 
Philippi again, the same writer resumes his diary 
in Acts xx. 5—xxi. 18, as he rejoins Paul and ac- 
companies him to Jerusalem; more than two years 
later still, the diary breaks in again at xxvii. 1- 
xxviii. 16, with the voyage to Rome, where we are 
finally left in the dark. What came before the 
meeting at Troas, what intervened between the 
journeys, what ensued after the arrival in Rome, 
the author who incorporates the diary has either 
not told us at all, or told in his own language from 
unknown sources, which, in proportion as we recede 
from the full light of the periods covered by the 
diary, are demonstrably less and less reliable; so 
that the beginnings of Paul’s career in Acts ix. are 
altogether out of harmony, as already noted, with 
his own positive statements in Galatians. 

This is the tradition, a// excellent for the purposes 
which the author of Acts had in view, namely, the 
edification of his readers and defense of Christian- 
ity,! but of varied character and value for the histor- 
ical critic, whose immediate object is different. As 
a source for critical history the tradition as it comes 
to us is partly of the very highest value, partly in- 
ferior, in high degree incomplete and fragmentary. 

The other source for-the-studyof Paul's life and 


| work is the group of Epistles, which have passed 


1 Luke i. 4. 


12 THE STORY OF ST. PAUL 


through a fiery storm of criticism, and come out 
almost wascathed. Only one important letter is 
now seriously questioned. This is Ephesians, for 
whose authenticity arguments which seem to me 
sufficient are given in my “ Introdyction to New ; 
Testament Literature.” 1 The Epistles to Timothy 
and Titus are generally regarded as at least par- 
tially later fabrications, and 2 Thessalonians has 
still some haze of doubt about it. But put all 
doubtful material together and it makes but a very 
small part of the whole; while as to doctrinal con- 
tents there is not one principle or doctrine, or phase 
of doctrine, belonging to Paul’s system, that is not 
amply supported by the admittedly genuine letters, 
without resort to the disputed ones. 

If only Paul had thought best to give us the 
report of his own life! Unfortunately for our pre- 
sent purpose, it was only by merest chance that he 
has once or twice been driven to autobiography. 
Where he has, as in Rom. vii., Gal. i., and 2 Cor. 
xi., his utterances are of course a standard in oppo- 
sition to which mere later tradition, as we have it * 
in the anonymous Book of Acts, has no standing. 
Only before rejecting anything we have to be sure 
there is real opposition, and to account for the 
error. 


Meagre and fragmentary as is the autobiographic 
1 Macmillan Company, 1900. 


FORMATIVE INFLUENCES 13 


material of the Epistles, it avails to supplement the 
story of Acts, as well as to hold a check upon it. 
The significance of events is to be learned in vastly 
greater degree from the Epistles than from Acts. 

The method of our present inquiry, therefore, 
suggests itself. We have found it essential to an 
understanding of the beginnings of Christianity to 
understand Paul. The study we are to give is to be 
“historical and literary.” Accordingly, we divide 
our subject into First: /Paul’s Life and _Mission-— 
ary Work. Second :-his-Letters-as-embodying-his~~ 

“aystem of thought and interpretation of Chris- 
tiamty. 

Our principal reliance for the life and work of 
the Apostle will necessarily be the story of the 
Book of Acts, but only as carefully verified and 
interpreted from the allusions and occasional fuller 
statements of the Epistles. Conversely, our prin- 
cipal reliance for the teaching must be the Epistles, 
but always interpreted in the light of the history as 

. we have been able critically to reconstruct it; for 

) obviously nothing is more blind than one half a 
correspondence, where one has no knowledge of the 
circumstances which called it forth. 


FORMATIVE INFLUENCES. 


The mere outward facts of Paul’s early life are 
soon told, because tradition is so meagre. He ap- 


14 THE STORY OF ST. PAUL 


pears in Acts a young man, but certainly mature 
enough and high enough in station to be intrusted 
by the high-priest with very great and responsible 
authority. Paul himself in his Epistles and the 
anti-Pauline author of the “‘ Clementine Homilies ” 
—an Ebionite romance, whose elements date back 
to about 170 a. p. — corroborate this view of his 
rank and importance. He had come to Jerusalem 
from Tarsus, one of the foremost university centres 
of the world at the time, and as a free-born Roman 
citizen. We find later a married sister of his living 
in Jerusalem. Perhaps Paul went to her home. 
He became, according to Acts, the pupil of Gama- 
liel, the most renowned rabbi of the age, celebrated 
especially for the broad tolerance of his views, 
which even led him to make use of Greek litera- 
ture, to the scandal of more conservative teach- 
ers. Gamaliel in Acts is correctly represented 
as leader, if not creator, of the type of Pharisaism 
which demanded toleration for Christianity, on 
broad grounds of abstention from what is God’s 
concern. Later tradition in the Clementine writings | 
goes farther and declares him (of course unwar- || 
. rantably) a secret believer and friend of the Chureh. | 
The fact that Paul himself declares that at this 
time he outdid many of his contemporaries as a | 
zealot for the traditions of the Jewish fathers, evin- 
cing his zeal in fierce persecution of the Church, is 





FORMATIVE INFLUENCES 15 


not sufficient warrant for denying the tradition 
that he was a pupil of Gamaliel. Others besides 
the young man himself may have had a voice in 
the selection of his teacher. Indeed, that will be 
neither the first nor the last time that a pupil has 
taken narrower views than his master, and acted 
in violation of his principles. Gamaliel’s influence 
may have affected Paul more in later life than just 
at the time of the disputes with Stephen. That also 
would not be unexampled. 

Had we any reason to suppose that Saul of Tarsus 
had ever seen Jesus we must of course reckon it, 
however brief the contact, among the vital forma- 
tive influences. Probably he had never seen or 
heard him. Certainly not to the extent of any 
personal intercourse. It is the constant reproach of 
Paul’s bitter antagonists that he had no such know- 
ledge. And Paul’s answer is never to deny the al- 
legation, but always to fall back upon his spiritual 
apprehension of Christ. When, in defending his 
apostleship, he makes a claim of having “ seen the 
Lord,” the reference turns out to be to the vision 
on the road to Damascus. The one passage which 
seems to imply something more, “‘ Yea, though we 
have known Christ after the flesh, yet would we 
know him so no more,” is simply a mistranslation, as 
the very italics of Authorized and Revised Versions 
should show. We should render: “ Yea, though 


16 THE STORY OF ST. PAUL 


(as Jews) we have known a Messiah of the fleshly 
type (what Jesus designates ‘ savoring the things 
that be of men’), yet would we know such a 
Messiah no more.” Moreover, with all his bitter 
regrets of his persecuting career, Paul never re- 
proaches himself with any part in the plots against 
Jesus himself. The result is clear. Paul had had 
no personal contact with the Prophet of Nazareth. 
He may have been absent from Jerusalem at the 
special period of Jesus’ activity, or his student days 
under Gamaliel may have begun at a later time. 
God’s Son was revealed in Paul; not to the eves 
of the flesh. 

Paul’s career as a persecutor began after the first 
attacks upon the infant Church had ceased. These 
were of a purely political character. The Sadducees, 
or priestly nobility and hierocracy, had no motive in 
the abortive attempt to stop the preaching of Peter 
and John, save to enforce order and suppress what 
they regarded as a revival of the imsurrectionary 
messianism of the crucified Galilean. Orthodoxy 
was no concern of theirs; they were unorthodox 
themselves, when not rank infidels. As soon as the 
Nazarene sect appeared to be politically harmless 
they let it alone. 

The persecution which brought Saul of Tarsus 
to the front had a totally different motive. It 
sprang from a new fear, perhaps excited by the 








FORMATIVE INFLUENCES 17 


more radical type of teaching introduced by Stephen 
and the Hellenists. These Christians of the Greek 
world presented a type of doctrine which their 
orthodox Pharisean opponents in the Synagogue 
declared to be ‘blasphemy against Moses and 
against God.” They alleged that it destroyed the 
exclusive sanctity of the Templé and the author- 
ity of the Law. In the disputes, which we are 
particularly told took place “in the Synagogue of 
the Cilicians,’ among others, it is almost certain 
Paul must have had apart. The stoning of Stephen 
was less a judicial act than an outbreak of mob vio- 
lence. That Paul’s part in this was as prominent 
as tradition reports is mich more doubtful. But 
one trait of the story sounds almost like an echo 
from Paul’s own remorseful memory, the appeal 
of Stephen from his unjust earthly judges to One 
whom he declared he saw standing as Son of 
man —the heavenly Judge — beside the throne of 
God. The apostrophe was silenced with stones. 
But one that had been witness, if not participant, 
in that scene might well carry Stephen’s dying vision 


_in his memory until he too, arrested in midcourse 


of persecution, should see the Son of man standing 


as one exalted, in the glory of God. 


1 See Historical and Critical Contributions to Biblical Science 


(Yale Bicentennial Publications), Scribner’s, 1901, pp. 211 ff. 


_ “Stephen’s Speech.” 


4 





18 THE STORY OF ST. PAUL 


I am but recalling to you an outline of very 
familiar facts. Later we shall take up in detail the 
story of Paul’s conversion. For the present I wish 
to speak simply of the formative influences that 
had gone to make the impetus of this mighty career, 
already launched as it were in mideourse where 
we meet it, but suddenly, almost unaecountably, to 
be turned in a new direction. It is not brought to 
a standstill, the impetus is still there, the elements 
of the man’s mental and moral make-up are the 
same ; only they are suddenly cast in a new and 
unexpected combination. We must inquire, What 
were those elements? What was it, in Saul of 
Tarsus, that made it possible for him to undergo the 
experience that made him Paul the Apostle? For 
I take it no one imagines that such an experience 
could come to any and everybody, or that Paul’s 
conversion was a magical alteration of his nature, 
a tour de force of the Almighty, so that the perse- 
cutor found himself thinking, believing, hoping the 
opposite of what he had thought, hoped, believed, a 
few moments before, without being able to account 
for it, or explain why he had changed his mind. 
He would have had poor suecess as a missionary if 
he could give no better reason for the faith that 
was in him than such an experience. 

I must refer you for all details concerning Tarsus 
and its schools of philosophy, its citizens, Greek, 


FORMATIVE INFLUENCES 19 


: 


: Jewish, Roman, Paul’s parentage, probable train- 
: ing, attitude toward the world around him and to- 
ward Jerusalem and the Law, to the many excellent 
lives of the Apostle which have appeared since 
Conybeare and Howson, or better still to the Bible 
Dictionaries or general treatises on contemporary 
_ Jewish history, such as Hausrath’s or Schiirer’s. 
We are but making a comparison of the story and 
the letters; but archeology can do a great deal 
for us by supplementing our lack of individual 
knowledge of the youthful Saul himself from the — 
atmosphere we know he must have breathed. “A 
glance at the standard histories will enable us to 
classify the formative influences under two great 







heads, the Greco-Roman, or Hellenistic, and the 
Pharisean,. There can be no question that the 
youthful Saul’s supreme pride was in the latter. 
To him from childhood the one great goal of life 
had been “the righteousness of the Law.” His 
proudest consciousness was that he was a Hebrew 
of Hebrews, of the tribe of his great namesake, 
Saul; as touching religion, a Pharisee of the strait- 
est sect ; as touching zeal, fiercely intolerant of those 
whom he conceived to blaspheme the Law and the 
es place; as touching the righteousness of the 
_ Law, blameless. All this we may conceive to have 
lf ed his heart with a fierce disdain as he looked 
t the temples and shrines and halls of learning of 





20 THE STORY OF ST. PAUL 


his native city, or gazed upon the statue of Atheno- 
dorus, its great Stoic philosopher, the instructor of 
two Roman emperors, and benefactor of the city 
whither he had returned to teach in honored old 
ager The youthful Saul, free-born Roman citizen 
as he was, can hardly have shared im person the 
contempt and opprobrium too often visited upon his 
unpopular race; but we may be sure which way 
his sympathies were directed, and that every Gen- 
tile insult was fully requited. Toward Gentile 
thought, as later toward Christian, we must conceive 
Saul’s attitude to have been rather that of active 
hostility than of indifference or ignorance. 

_~ Still there was another side. At Jerusalem it 
was the Hellenist Jew in whose behalf chivalrous 
feeling would be called forth. As pupil of Gama- 
liel, if not in his own right, Saul of Tarsus would 
feel it a duty to show that the Greek learning, of 
which his native town was one of the foremost 
representatives, was not altogether despicable, that 
_Stoicism in particular had “a zeal for righteous- 
ness,” if not “‘according to knowledge.” And, if 
we may trust the report of Paul’s speeches in Acts, 
Paul had room alongside his Jewish pride of race 
for a very distinct feeling of patriotism toward 
Tarsus as “no mean city.” He even seems to 
have had quite a well-developed sense of the dig- 
nity that hedged about the man who could defy, 





FORMATIVE INFLUENCES 21 


the petty magistrates of provincial towns with the 
magic words, “Civis Romanus sum.” 

The more he saw of the bigotry and provincial- 
ism of Jerusalem, condemning in its narrow intoler- 
ance even the imperfect Greek studies of his great 
master Gamaliel, the more must his mind have re- 
verted to doctrines which could not but be famil- 
iar to him, doctrines of the Stoics of Tarsus. For 
the Stoic and Cynic philosopher, from Diogenes 
to Epictetus, was also a street preacher and ex- 
horter of the common-man, a zealot for the law 
that is written on the fleshly tables of the heart,} 
a profound believer in prayer to the One God of 
heaven and earth, as our ally in the struggle against 
the weakness of the flesh. 

Paul’s speech at Athens, if it be a composition 
of the author of Acts, has at least an extraordinary 
correspondence with the outline of his missionary 
preaching given by Paul himself in 1 Thess. i. 10.2 __ 
At least it depends on real knowledge of such 
preaching. Down to the startling conclusion of, 
verse 31, which introduces Jesus and the resurrec- 
tion, with the judgment to come, the whole sermon 
might be from one of the Cynic or Stoic preachers 
of Paul’s native city, not merely the famous quota- 


1 As Lightfoot has pointed out, it is to the coinage of Stoicism 
_ that Paul resorts for his great word cuveldno1s — “ conscience.” 
2 See Sabatier, The Apostle Paul, chap. i. 


22 THE STORY OF ST. PAUL 


tion from the Hymn, or Prayer, of Cleanthes the 
Stoic, the noblest religious utterance of heathen 
antiquity.? 

But when Paul began to speak of Jesus and the 
resurrection they stopped him with derision. And 
certain of the Stoic and Epicurean philosophers who 
were there expressed their opinion of the speaker 
in a term which, Ramsay tells us, was as much the 
Athenian university slang of the period as the term 
“ Philister” in the Gottingen slang of Heine’s 
day. ‘“ Babbler,” our versions render it; literally, 
“‘ seed-picker.” Ramsay has beautifully paraphrased 
the word by the epithet Browning’s Karshish ap- 
plies to himself, “a picker-up of learning’s crumbs.” 
/ Paul was not schooled in Greek learning. He had 
only “picked it up,” as we see from his inaecu- 
rate quotation of the Epicurean poet Menander in 
1 Cor. xv. 33. Thus the quick-witted Athenians 
found an easy target for their ridicule. In Athens 
he won small results, and by his own account de- 

1 The sermonas a whole is more closely paralleled in the litera- 
ture of Jewish and Jewish-Christian missionary propaganda. The 
parallel is almost verbatim in the fragment of the Kyptyua TMeérpou 
quoted by Clem. Al. Strom. vi. But the Stoie preaching furnishes 
its quota of close parallels. Cf. e. g. verse 24 with the passage 
from Seneca quoted by Lactantius (Div. Inst. vi. 25): “* Temples 
are not to be built to God of stones piled on high: he must be 
consecrated in each man’s heart.” Lightfoot says of this speech, 


“* Tt shows a studied coincidence with Stoic modes of expression.” 
St. Paul and Seneca, p. 804. Cf. Wisd. xi. 23, xiii. 1-10. 


FORMATIVE INFLUENCES 23 


termined at Corinth, his next missionary field, to 
know nothing of philosophy, but only of “ Christ 
and him crucified.” 

But among the f formatiye influences.whieh-went 
to the make-up of Paul we cannot afford to neglect 
the environment of his early years. However Paul 

“may have despised and reacted against it in his 
youth, the Stoic philosophy was in itself a noble 
and worthy teaching, and one which, as both tradi- 
tion and his own writings prove, left an indelible 
impress on his memory. Whether he would or 
no, Paul went to Jerusalem something more than 
a Pharisee. “Hay eaennee 
lenist, — a cosmopolitan _in both the political and 
acces ated with the atmosphere 
of the noblest Greek learning of the age, imbued 
with a sense of that passionate craving for right- 
eousness which distinguished its most exalted and 
spiritual philosophy, conscious also of its deep reli- 
gious feeling; for where will you find a tenderer, 

“ more pathetic expression for the noblest aspirations 
of heathen antiquity than that which Paul himself 
applies: “a groping after God, if haply they 
might feel after him and find him; though he be 
not far from any one of us. For in him we live 
and move and have our being.” 

Of the two great formative influences of Paul’s 
early life, the first and most important is certainly 


24 THE STORY OF ST. PAUL 


Pharisaism, — Pharisaism of the best and broadest 
type, that of the young nobleman who “came 
running and kneeled to Jesus, saying, Good Mas- 
ter, what shall I do that I may inherit eternal life?” 
On the earnest but naive longing displayed by it 
for the righteousness of the Law, to obtain by it 
eternal life, Jesus had looked with a yearning affec- 
tion. Of this kind of Pharisaism Paul said before 
the Sanhedrin at his last visit to Jerusalem that he 
had never ceased to be a Pharisee. ' But in Stoicism 
also, as revealed in that Hymn of Cleanthes which 
he quotes at Athens, we should not fail to see a 
more indirect but not less real influence, fitting 
him unconsciously for his prodigious task. 

In our study of Paul’s teaching I shall try to 
show that some of his profoundest and most char- 
acteristic ideas are, to say the least, not mainly 
rooted in the soil of Judaism, but draw their prin- 
cipal nourishment from sources directly or indi- 
rectly Stoic. Lightfoot’s excursus on “St. Paul 
and Seneca” in his Commentary on Philippians 
has shown that the coincidences in expression be-. 
tween the Christian Apostle and his contempo- 
rary the statesman-philosopher are quite imexpli- 
cable unless we admit some common source. 
Pfleiderer’s chapter on Formative Influences in 
the recent (1902) edition of his “ Urchristenthum ” 
shows that there are great key-thoughts of Paul, 


FORMATIVE INFLUENCES 25 


such as the conception of Christ as the heavenly, 
spiritual Man, and of the kingdom as the new social 
organism of humanity, whose affinities are not He- 
brew but Greek. These are only symptoms of an 
awakening among biblical scholars to the fact that 
Jewish thought had not been so impervious as we 
have been wont to imagine to that of the great age 
of Hellenization around it.} 

But I must turn to the light thrown, however 
casually and indirectly, by Paul himself on his own 
early career and the influences which shaped it 
toward ends unforeseen by himself. 

Y Gal. i. 15, where Paul applies to himself the 
language of Jeremiah, “ The word of the Lord 
came unto me saying, Before I formed thee in the 
belly I knew thee, and before thou camest forth 
from the womb I sanctified thee: I have appointed 
thee a prophet unto the Gentiles,” is a profoundly 
significant and characteristic expression of Paul’s 
own feeling regarding the formative influences of 
his early life. God had adapted everything in it to 


1 Since the above was written a new evidence of the broader 
study of this subject has been given in the first of a proposed 
series of Forschungen zur Religion und Literatur des alten und 
neuen Testaments, edited by W. Bousset and H. Gunkel. Gunkel’s 
present contribution, “ Zum religionsgeschichtlichen Verstandniss 
des neuen Testaments ” (1903), is a worthy demonstration of the 
undercurrent of participation by popular, if not official, Judaism 
in the contemporary world-movements of religious thought. 


26 THE STORY OF ST. PAUL 


a great purpose of his own, to which Paul himself 
had been blind. His very birth, with its political 
immunities, his Greek life and training, his fanat- 
ical zeal for Mosaism, — yes, even, we may believe, 
the disputations in which he had engaged with the 
followers of the Nazarene, the testimony against 
them, in which he was compelled to specify wherein 
their doctrines blasphemed the Law or the Temple, 
—all these had been of God’s ordering for the 
unforeseen end. And the forgiving prayers of his 
victims — think what they must have been to the 
heart of a Paul! How blind he had been! All 
those struggles of his to steel his heart in his own 
way had been a kicking of the ox against the goad. 
Steadily, surely, he had been driven along the path, 
until the scales had fallen from his eyes and he 
knew “ whereunto he was called.” 

But what was that great thing for which he had, 
as he says, been “ apprehended of God?” The use 
of the passage from Jeremiah is a suggestion of 
Paul’s conception of its magnitude. The conference 
in Jerusalem at which, as he tells us, he convineed 
the pillar Apostles that “ God who energized in Peter 
an apostleship to the circumcision, had wrought in 
him for an apostleship to the Gentiles,” the con- 
ference where he deliberately took for himself and 
Barnabas as their province nothing less than the 
entire world outside of the Jewish people, is con- 


FORMATIVE INFLUENCES 27 


clusive evidence of the magnitude of Paul’s ideas. 
The greatness of it is almost incredible; it seemed 
so to Paul himself; he marveled that God should 
have taken him, unworthy as he was, for so sublimely 
great a vocation. Yet nothing can be clearer than 
the reiterated utterances in which over and over 
again he shows, directly and indirectly, that nothing 
less than this could express the divinely ordered 
meaning of his life. His vocation was the com-. 
mending of Christianity to the heathen world as a 
gospel of God absolutely adequate to the great reli- 
gious needs it was dimly beginning to feel, groping 
after an Unknown God, crying out of the darkness 
for a “ Saviour-God” to give it moral strength and 
life. ! 

Was it then that Paul regarded himself as per- 
sonally able to evangelize the entire Greco-Roman 
world ?— Surely not. Prodigious as were his labors, 
surpassing all the Twelve as he did both in perse- 
eutions and in fruitful labors, he certainly enter- 
tained no such extravagant idea of his own personal 
abilities. We are indeed amazed to hear him de- 
elare in his letter to the Romans that “there 
remaineth no more room for me in these parts. 
From Jerusalem round about unto Ilyricum I have 
fully preached the gospel of Christ.” We must be- 
ware, too, of imagining that Paul looked forward to 
long centuries of intellectual and religious develop- 


28 THE STORY OF ST. PAUL 


ment in which the gospel he had preached would 
gradually win its way to supremacy in Greco- 
Roman civilization. Nothing can be clearer than 
his participation in the universal belief of the 
Christians of his age that the wind-up of the world 
was immediately impending. In his earliest letters 
Paul expects himself to be among those who should 
be alive and remain at the coming of the Lord to 
judgment. In the latest he expects rather to depart 
and be with Christ, leaving others to complete his 
unfinished task. But in no case has he any idea of 
the long perspective of growth. The gathering in 
of the Gentiles was to him only the gathering of the 
few ripe sheaves that might be gleaned in a life- 
time. None, surely, can have been more conscious 
than Paul that his personal work was but the barest 
scattering of the seed here and there. In what 
sense, then, can he have thought of himself as des- 
tined for so prodigious a vocation ? — Simply in the 
insight which God had given him into the meaning 
of all his providence, in the appearance of Jesus 
risen from the dead, a glorified world’s Messiah, 
for whom not only Israel but also the heathen 
world had all these ages been preparing. The time 
was indeed to be short, though Rom. ix.—xi. opens 
a far longer perspective than 2 Thess. But the 
arch was already built. It needed only the key- 
stone. Heathen religious thought at its best had 


FORMATIVE INFLUENCES 29 


been God’s disciplinary preparation for the Gospel. 
Paul’s revelation would make it complete. He had 
but to proclaim “the secret,” the “mystery long 
hid but now revealed,” which would commend itself 
to every right-minded Gentile whose heart God had 
prepared. This would then disseminate itself with 
the swiftness of a spreading fire. 

This is what he calls “ the dispensation of the 
grace of God toward the Gentiles which was given 
to me:” “ how that by revelation was made known 
unto me the mystery, which in other generations 
was not made known unto the sons of men, how 
that the Gentiles are fellow-heirs and fellow-mem- 
bers of the body and fellow-partakers of the pro- 
mise in Christ Jesus through the Gospel, whereof I 
was made a minister, according to the gift of that 
grace of God which was given me according to the 
working of his power. Unto me, who am less than 
the least of all saints was this grace given, to preach 
unto the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ ; 
and to make all men see what is the dispensation 
of the mystery, which from all ages hath been hid 
in God, who created all things; to the intent that 
now unto the principalities and the powers in the 
heavenly places might be made known through the 
Church the manifold wisdom of God according to 
the eternal purpose which he purposed in Christ 
Jesus our. Lord.” 4 

1 Eph. iii. 1-11, abridged. 


30 THE STORY OF ST. PAUL 


All the experiences of Paul’s life np to the time 
of his conversion had to his mind been unconsciously 
' leading up to this. God had made known to him a 
“mystery” hidden from times eternal. But once 
proclaimed it could be hid no longer. Christianity 
makes of Judaism the world-religion. That was 
the heart of it. I hope to show as we engage in the 
study of the Pauline Epistles how truly and in what 
sense Paul’s conception of Christianity made it a re- 
sponse to the need of the whole world, the capstone 
of a double arch whose buttress on the one side was 
planted on Jewish, on the other on Gentile soil. 
In conclusion of the lecture of to-day let me only 
try to illustrate the view which Paul may have 
taken of his divine calling as the Apostle to the 
Gentiles, by the career of his great predecessor. 
Philo the Jewish philosopher of Alexandria. Philo’s 
works may or may not have been known to Paul, 
but they have survived to our time just because they 
embody to such an extent ideas which to us seem 
altogether Christian. Medizval ecclesiastics and 
scribes, ignorant of the fact that they were written 
before the preaching of Jesus, classified and tran- 
scribed them for this reason among the works of 
the Christian Fathers. 

For centuries even in Philo’s day the Greek- 
speaking world had been morally and religiously 
approaching a type of thought closely similar to 


FORMATIVE INFLUENCES 31 


that of the Hebrew prophets. The old polytheism 
was no longer anything more than a rapidly crum- 
bling superstition of the ignorant rabble. Not phi- 
losophers only, but all intelligent and earnest- 
minded people revered the One supreme divinity, 
the 6 eds of Plato. What the Stoic and Cynic 
philosophers were busy with Hausrath has told in 
his chapters on their propaganda. In Alexandria 
the mythologic tales of Homer and Hesiod were’ 
rejected as fables, or interpreted allegorically, so 
as to remove what was incompatible with the con- 
ception of a supreme God, wise and just and holy. 
W hat wonder that in this seat of Jewish progressive 
* thought and Greek learning Jews should lay hold 
of Greek philosophy to claim it as an off-shoot of 
Mosaism? And not only Greek but Egyptian and 
Oriental thought had been laid under contribution. 

Philo is the greatest representative of this effort. 
To him the great ideas of Plato are mere sparks 
from the divine revelation vouchsafed to Moses. 
In the Law and the Prophets he discovers the 
whole Platonic philosophy by means of allegorical 
‘interpretation ; and this system, half Jewish, half 
Greek, he launches on the stream of Alexandrian 
thought, convinced that it meets the world’s need, 
embodying the sum and substance of philosophy 
and religion. 

To us it seems a mere hybrid, which appeals 


32 THE STORY OF ST. PAUL 


neither with the force of Platonism nor of Mosaism. 
But certainly the conception was a magnificent one, 
and worthy of the age which had seen the world 
made politically one. To conceive Judaism enriched 
with all of Greek philosophic thought, expanding 
from the mere religion of a petty nation into a 
world-religion, and this before the preaching of the 
Gospel, was no mean ideal. 

Our fourth evangelist employs the phraseology 
of Philo for his great doctrine of the Logos. Philo 
himself borrows the term from the Ionic philo- 
sophers to signify the supreme link between the 
Creator and his world, God and man. “John” is 
but the systematizer of Paul in his feeling that this 
Logos-doetrine needs but the knowledge of Jesus 
as Messiah to make it complete. “The Logos be- 
came flesh and dwelt among us.” With these words 
he adopts the highest thought of Philo and, giving 
it Christian baptism, transmits it to the Church as 
the philosophic expression of the Pauline Chris- 
tology. For “John” is but the “vindicator” —_ 
the goel — of Paul, the true “ Apostle of love,” 
whose Logos-doctrine, as Sabatier has said, lacks 
but the name to be Johannine; just as Sanday, 
conversely, has designated the Johannine as Pauline 
in all but the name. 

We must not think of Paulas diréetly dependent 
on any Stoic writer, any more than the fourth evan- _ 






FORMATIVE INFLUENCES 33 


gelist is directly dependent on Philo. We do know, 
however, that Paul was profoundly influenced by 
the book called the Wisdom of Solomon, which 
presents some of the most characteristic Stoic ideas 
in Pharisean garb, and we have at least some rea- 
son to think he was not wholly unaffected by the 
teaching of Gamaliel. At any rate, that which 
Philo’s philosophic system, grandly conceived as it 
was, could not do in that it remained, in the absence 
of any knowledge of the actual historic Christ, a 
bare abstract speculation, that Paul did, uniting 
the lighest thought of Hebrew prophet and Greek 
philosopher in a gospel which for Jew and Greek 
is forever “ Christ, the Power of God and the Wis- 
dom of God.” 

Our best attainable explanation of Paul’s sense 
of his vocation, so unmistakable and at the same 
time so almost incredibly great, will be found in 
his own sense of the working of God in the forma- 
tive influences of his life. For therein Paul realized 
that God had “revealed His Son in him,” as the 
common goal of Gentile groping after God, and 





wish striving for righteousness, the Wisdom and 
the Power of God. 


y LECTURE II 
CONVERSION AND VOCATION 


In discussing the formative influences of Paul’s — 
pre-Christian career we found it reasonable to infer 
from Gal. i. 15 that Paul had come to regard the 
whole experience of his early life as a providential 
shaping of his character and capacities for his 
divinely appointed calling. However blind He had 
been until the moment of his conversion, after it 
he could see that everything in his life had really 
been leading up to it. Even his fierce persecution 
of the faith was part of that unconscious prepara- 
tion. So that there is nothing improbable in the 
representation of one of the three parallel accounts 
in the Book of Acts, that he heard a voice saying 
to him, not in his own Greek mother-tongue, but 
in the Aramaic of the Galilean Prophet, “Saul, 
Saul, why persecutest thou me? It is hard for thee 
to kick against the goad.” The three Lucan ac- 
counts differ indeed quite widely among themselves, 
so that it is clear to the unprejudiced reader that 
the narrator is not attempting to give a critically 
exact account, but to interpret for his readers what 
significance the experience had for Paul, and for 


CONVERSION AND VOCATION 35 


the Church at large. His interpretations differ in 
fact most widely of all on a point which special 
circumstances made one of vital importance to 
Paul, namely, his apostleship to the Gentiles, whose 
directness and immediacy, as we shall see, Paul 
defends with the ‘utmost vehemence. In Acts, on 
the contrary, one report makes it come indirectly 
through Ananias; a second gives it directly to 
Paul, but not until he has first begun his mission- 
ary career in Jerusalem under direction of the 
Apostles ; only the third and last agrees with the 
sworn declaration of Galatians. Thus the need for 
remembering that the story.of Luke is later, and 
not written for the purposes of the critical historian, 
is abundantly manifest. 

Yet we have no need to reject this saying, re- 
ported only in the last and most trustworthy of 
the three Lucan accounts: “It is hard for thee 
to kick against the goad,” for it is not only quite 
reconcilable to all we can learn from the Epistles, 
it is also corroborated by Paul’s own disposition 
to look upon his past as an unconscious prepara- 
tion. In fact, it seems to strike the very key-note 
of Paul’s mental condition in approaching the great 
/- crisis. He had been lashing out blindly, fiercely, / 
like a restive ox, who fails to realize that the path 
he is to travel in is laid out before him, and that 
the One who controls him is both wiser and stronger 


36 THE STORY OF ST. PAUL 


than he. He feels the sharp prick of the steel- 
pointed goad, and at first only kicks the harder ; 
till mere brute strength can bear the pain no 
longer, and the stronger, wiser will prevails. 

We have unceasing debate concerning the psy- 
chology of Paul’s conversion, because each of the 
contending parties maintains a truth. On the one 
side it is justly contended that if the conversion 
had no rational preparation, Paul must have gone 
back to his previous convictions and beliefs as 
soon as the immediate effects wore off. He would 
have said to himself, “« That was a very strange 
experience I had, when that vision came to me and ~ 
I fell from my horse in a trance. Surely these 
Christians have an ally in Beelzebub, as my fellow 
Pharisees allege. Either I had a sunstroke, and 
have been delirious, or their incantations haye cast 
a spell upon me.” Such reasoning is just: it is 
impossible to regard the transition of Paul’s mind 
as the passing from a condition of stable to un- 
stable equilibrium. His former condition of mind, 
fixed as it seemed, was really unstable. The condi- 
tion into which he passed was: one in which ey>ry 
fact of his experience, every reasoning faculty of 
his mind, found thenceforth complete and unshaken 
satisfaction.\, Those, therefore, who insist that Paut’s 
experience in conversion cannot have been unpre- 
pared have an impregnable element of truth on 













CONVE = 
their side. It is a pity 
it to a length which ma 
appear a conscious hypocrite, 
hands in the blood of innocent 
while at the least doubtful in his 
justice of their cause. 

For the opposite contention has at least 
in its favor. Paul himself reiterates and emphas 
the point that he was in some way quite unpre- 
pared; that his conversion was the act of God; 
_ that he neither elaborated his gospel, nor was 

taught it, but that it came to him by divine reve- 
lation. God wrought it in him even as he wrought 
in Peter, to whom, after a momentous decision of 
faith, Jesus himself had said, “ Flesh and blood 
hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father 
which is in heaven.” 

What is to reconcile these two apparently irre- 
concilable truths ? Nothing so well, perhaps, as 
the phrase from that ill-supported tradition of Acts, 
“ Saul, Saul, it is hard for thee to kick against the 
goad.” 

Paul is absolutely guiltless of conscious prepara-| 
tion for the gospel. This is clearly involved in his | 
strong assertions against those who compared his” 
“ self-elaborated system,” as they called it, with the 
“ revelation of the Son of God” to Peter.t 


1 Clem. Hom. xvii. 19. 










38 “ST. PAUL 


that Paul had had no 
; for he has fortunately — 
rtant autobiographie chapter 
he contrary that he was full of 
t were simply “ goading” him to 
Only they were not misgivings in 
to the faith he was persecuting. In that 
“verily thought he did God service.” His 
isgivings were born of that same restless con- 
science — so he had learned from Stoic preachers 
to call it — which had made “zeal for righteous- 
ness” the ruling passion of his life, and at the 
same time implanted in him an ideal of right- 
eousness that no mere Pharisaism could satisfy. 
- He was learning the strength of the “ law of sin in 
his members.” The crisis was unavoidable; but 
Paul was blind even to that. Much less had it 
«‘ dawned ” upon him (the figure is his own)? that 
in the gospel he was persecuting there was “re- 
vealed a righteousness of God by faith unto faith.” 
So far as Paul himself knew, he was unprepared 
' for a change to the Christian faith. In reality, all 
the defenses of his Pharisean self-righteousness, 
| honeyeombed as they were with misgivings, were 


on the point of crumbling like dikes invisibly wa- 
dermined before the inrush of the sea. Moreover, 
his nervous system, keyed to the highest pitch by 

1 2 Cor. iv. 4. mack 


CONVERSION AND VOCATION 39 
the fearful tension of those scenes of blood to which 





e forced a nature exceptionally gentle and tender, 


paroxysms that afterwards marked great epochs of 
his life. In them he experienced “visions and rey- 
elations of the Lord,” whether in the body or out 
of the body he could not tell, God only knew. 
After them his physical constitution reacted. He 
felt sore and bruised, as though pounded by the 
fists of an athlete. “« Weakness” was the symptom 
most pronounced, or at least the one Paul felt it 
hardest to bear; but he also felt, whether with 
others it was really so or not, that his condition 
made him repulsive, so as to be a “ temptation in 
his flesh”’ to those to whom he then preached, “ to 
despise and loathe” him. This physical reaction 
Paul at first counted “a messenger of Satan,” per- 
mitted by God to “buffet” him, that he “ might 
not be exalted overmuch by the exceeding great- 
ness of the revelations.” 

Not merely the author of Acts, but the very 
companion of Paul who writes the Diary tells us of 
at least two instances wherein action was deter- 
mined, under most trying and depressing circum- 
stances, by these visions of Paul; and in both cases 
the Apostle rose from his weakness to meet the 

1 Gal. iv. 14. 


40 THE STORY OF ST. PAUL 

emergency like one inspired, winning on these oc- 
casions some of the most striking triumphs of his 
life. The first is at Troas, where, after a long and 
perilous journey, over the mountains behind the 
Ionic coast whither Paul had intended to go, the 
little missionary party found themselves at the end 

of their resources. Paul’s faith reacted then in the 
vision of the ‘‘ man of Macedonia” summoning them 

to their great mission in Hellas. a 

The other vision came after a night of peril in 
the deep, after “they had been long without food,” 
‘‘when neither sun nor stars had shone for many 
days ” on the drifting wreck. Our informant is again 
the Diarist, who recalls the man of Tarsus standing 
forth with a rallying cry of hope and courage : 
“For,” said he, “‘there stood by me this night an 
angel of the God whose I am, whom also I worship, 
saying, Fear not, Paul; thou must stand before 
Cesar: and, lo, God hath granted thee all them 
that sail with thee.” 

We may say of these visions, too, that they were 
‘unprepared ;” and yet they grew out of the situ- 
“ation, The very days of fasting, casually referred 
to in the story of the shipwreck, were a factor of 
the physical conditions of vision well-known to the 
psychologist.1 Paul is not conscious of any codp- 


99 


1 As for the positive assurance, “Thou must stand before 
Cesar,” we know from Phil. i. 19-25 how Paul was accustomed to 


CONVERSION AND VOCATION 41 


eration of his own mind in these great leaps of faith, 

as I may call them, and yet the result is always 

such that, as he looks back upon his former thought,” 
it appears as the true and rational conclusion. He 
gladly and gratefully accepts it as the direct gift of 
God. Revelation therefore it is, and ever will be; 
no matter how much we may learn as to the mode 
of God’s working in it. It is no detraction from 
the divineness of the source of such bursts of in- 
sight, that we can adduce a certain number of more 
or less parallel cases. In fact some of the greatest 
minds in history have been so constituted that the 
solution of their problems burst upon them unfore- 
seen, in dreams, or even visions and trances, accord- 
ing to temperament and conditions. We can all 
think of Archimedes rushing naked from the bath 
with his ery “ Eureka!” We can think of Coleridge 
and De Quincey “ receiving,” as they themselves put 
it, entire poems and prose compositions, suddenly, 
in a manner to them inexplicable, because they, 
more than all others, are unaware of that auto- 
matic action of the mind which modern psychology 
designates “ subliminal.” Still such merely intellec- 
tual revelations are not the true analogy for Paul’s 


reason from the needs of his cause as to his own deliverance. We 
also know from 2 Cor. v. 20, that he regarded himself as an am- 
bassador on behalf of Christ,” and therefore under God’s safe-con- 
duct to the emperor. 


42 THE STORY OF ST. PAUL 


ease. We must rather recall the story of Luther, 
a kind of second Paul, vainly seeking relief for the 
anguish of a conscience that will not down, by climb- 
ing on his knees the Holy Stair at Rome. With 
muttered prayers he nears the top, thinking at 
least to lay to his soul the unction of indulgence, 
when lo, a voice, so seemingly outside himself he 
can hardly believe that others have not heard it, 
proclaims aloud, “The just shall live by faith ;” 
and Martin Luther the penitent rises from his 
knees, and deliberately walks down the stair through 
the midst of the astonished worshipers.? 

Every one of us has had more or less experience 
of these subconscious processes of mind, operating 
without our knowledge or control and frequent!y 
almost startling us, sometimes in dreams, some- 
times in waking hours, but all unaccountably, by 
presenting ready-made solutions of long-vexed and 
perhaps distressing problems.? But such little new 
light as we have gained on the mode by which these 
revelations come need not lead us to repudiate our 
gratitude to God, nor to say “« Not God, but my 
own reason is the Source and Giver of Light.”) 
The last and final explanation of every increase of 


1 The story is told by Paul Luther as an experience he had 
heard his father relate. 

2 This subconscious reasoning, often designated intuition, is 
commoner in the female sex. Women claim to know without be- 
ing able to tell how or why ; and the claim has an element of truth. 


CONVERSION AND VOCATION 43 


truth is still: “There is a spirit in man, and the 

inspiration of the Almighty giveth him understand- 

ing.” : 

Paul, at least, is reverently assured that the in- 
sight which he has into the “ mystery of the eternal 

purpose of God who created all things, which in 

other generations was not made known unto the 

sons of men,” is nothing of his own invention, but | 
a revelation, for which he owes devout thanksgiv- 
ing to God. To Peter he allowed the same; and 
Peter had the authorization of Jesus himself for the 
reverent ascription. 

And yet Paul is critic as well as mystic. If we 
imagined him as accepting without question what- 
ever came in the form of vision or revelation, we 
should be utterly mistaking our man. Paul is no 
more open to delusion by the mere mode in which 
an alleged truth presents itself than your modern 
scientist, who knows that genius is nothing in the 
world but the scientific or poetic imagination 
(another term for brilliant guessing), and yet, how- 
ever grateful he may be for this mysterious endow- 
ment, holds every tempting suggestion down to the 
cold test of fact. It is Paul, this same seer of 
“visions and revelations of the Lord,” who bids 
the Thessalonians “prove all things” (he is speaking 
of “ revelations”’), holding fast only that which can 
stand the test of moral judgment. It is this same 


44 THE STORY OF ST. PAUL 


dreamer, Paul, who demands that his Corinthian 
converts shall subject every revelation to the test 
of reason and conscience, reminding them that “ the 
spirits of the prophets are subject to the prophets,” 
and no claims of inspired utterance can excuse the 
violation of the homely principles of reverence, good 
order, and edification. 

The man who thus inculeates criticism is no 
dweller in a fool’s paradise of feeling and fancy. 
No matter what the comfort Paul has had from his 
faith in the risen Christ, no matter how glorious it 
has made his life, if it has been a delusion, “ if 
Christ be not risen from the dead,” then he is 
“of all men most miserable,” wretched for all his 
hope and joy, because he has believed a lie.’ Paul 
does not credit barren logic with the fruit of intui- 
tion ; but neither does he present as revelation any- 
thing which cannot stand the test of reason. Truth 
for him is that fine gold which comes from the cru- 
cible of an incorruptible rational and moral judg- 
ment. Were it otherwise, his “ revelations ” would 
have far less weight with us than they do. : 

The conversion of St. Paul has been justly called 
the most _important.event~in™ the history~of the 


Christian Church. That is not so much because our 


whole conception of his life and doctrine hinges 
on it, as(because it forms the foundation proof of 
the resurrection appearances of Christ) First-hand 


CONVERSION AND ‘VOCATION 45 


documentary evidence of this, I need scarcely say, 
is attainable only in the writings of Paul. (In 1 Co- 
rinthians we have, not only the oldest record, but 
the solitary document in which a known individual 
tells us in so many words {1 saw the risen Lord.” 
Tt is this psychological experience which we have 
now to discuss, though its bearing for our present 
interest is simply upon Paul’s life and teaching. 
For actual narration of the occurrence we are 
exclusively dependent upon the author of Acts, 
whose account, as already shown, gives evidence of 
its uncritical, popular character by discrepancies 
between the three parallel narratives which the 
compiler might perfectly well have removed if he 
had cared to take the trouble.? As it is, we have 
only the allusions of ‘the Epistles from which to 


1 Whether, in case it should appear that no objective factor 
were required to account for the experiences of the first disciples 
on which they based their belief in the resurrection, practical 
Christianity could still rest upon the faith of Jesus previous to his 
death in the “God not of the dead but of the living ” is a ques- 
tion for the practical theologian. Historically, the foundation has 
been the alleged appearances, of which we have no direct evidence 
but Paul’s. 

2 We haye no right to blame Luke for writing his narrative as 
he did, and for the purpose of simple edification that he proposes. 
The modern critical historian must not expect his work to be done 
for him. He should rather be thankful that the ancient writer has ~ 
not obliterated the traces of his own uncritical methods, but has 
left both the means and the stimulus to independent inyestiga- 
tion. 


46 THE STORY OF ST. PAUL 


verify the story, for Paul’s correspondents are 
assumed to know of the event. 

I scarcely need enumerate the variant data of 
Acts, which are generally familiar. It was midday 
on the desert road near the gates of Damascus. 
Saul, armed with letters from Caiaphas to the syna- 
gogue authorities, and accompanied by certain 
others, was abdut to renew the persecution which 
had but shortly before resulted in the death of 
Stephen. What follows is the experience of Saul, 
ultimately derived, of course, from his own report, 
not that of his unbelieving companions. There 
shone forth suddenly a light from heaven above 
the brightness of the sun, and Saul fell prostrate,1 
hearing a voice that addressed him in the Hebrew 
(Aramaic) tongue :? “ Saul, Saul, why persecutest 
thou me? It is hard for thee to kick against the 
goad.”3 To Saul’s question, “ Who art thou, 
Lord?” the answer was, “I am Jesus whom thou 
persecutest.” Stunned and blinded, Saul was 
brought by his companions to Damascus, and there 


1 According to xxvi. 14 all fell to the ground. According to 
ix. 7 Paul’s companions remained standing. 

2 The voice according to xxii. 9 was not heard by Paul’s com- 
panions, though there they are said to have seen the light. Ac- 
cording to ix. 7 they heard a voice (which, however, is understood 
in one form of the text to be Saul’s voice), but did not see the 
light. 

3 This last clause only in xxyi. 14. 


CONVERSION AND VOCATION 47 


made himself known to the church he had come to 
persecute. 

The most important of the variations in the 
three accounts of Acts is that which concerns the 
healing, baptism, and instruction of the new con- 
vert by Ananias, and the beginnings of Paul’s 
preaching. In ‘Acts xxvi. 16-18 Ananias disap- 
pears entirely from view.! Paul receives his call to 
preach to the Gentiles directly in the vision itself, 
and at once obeys. In the narrative of ix. 6-30 
Ananias is told of Paul’s commission to the Gen- 
tiles, which we are left to infer he reported to 
Paul. This account has a very complicated appa- 
ratus of visions, and visions of visions.? Besides 
that to Paul on the Damascus road, there is a 
vision to Ananias, who is told in the vision that 
Paul has had a second, supplementary vision, in 
which he, Paul, has seen Ananias coming in and 
healing his blindness. This no doubt is very similar 
to the apparatus of complementary visions by which 
Peter and Cornelius are made mutually acquainted ; 
but the literary analogy does not make the proba- 


1 Acts ix., a narrative which the author seems to have derived 
from Jewish-Christian tradition, is farthest from Paul’s own repre- 
sentations. The speeches of Paul in cc. xxii. and xxvi. seem to 
be derived from a more Pauline source. The former is partially 
adjusted to c. ix.; the latter scarcely touched. : 

2 However, a single manuscript of the Old Latin version 
omits the subsidiary vision of Acts ix. 12. 


48 THE STORY OF ST. PAUL 


bility any greater that such things occurred in real 
life. It is a way certain Jewish and Jewish-Christian 
authors have of telling things, but so far as our 
knowledge extends, it is not at all God’s way of 
doing things.1 Doubtless the church in Damascus 
could long point to the very house in the street 
called Straight (still the main street of the city) 
where Paul was baptized. Doubtless it made the 
most of Ananias’s part in the wonderful story. 
But while the Epistles furnish a number of hints 
to corroborate the narrative as a whole, it is an 


1 This part of Acts shows many traces of derivation from a 
Jewish-Christian source, and it is one of the characteristics of 
these sources, as we see in the early chapters of Matthew and 
Luke, as well as constantly in the Talmnd, that the writer ac- 
quaints his reader with the inner, providential significance of 
what is taking place on the earth — introduces him, as it were, 
behind the scenes — by the literary fiction of a vision. Thus the 
significance of Peter’s intercourse with the Gentile Cornelius 
(“ Thou wentest in to men uncircumcised, and didst eat with 
them”) is revealed by the vision of the sheet let down from 
heaven. Jesus employs the figure several times (e. g. “I saw 
Satan as lightning fallen from heaven”), and surely must have 
done so in acquainting the Twelve with his experience at baptism. 
The evangelists employ this method of showing the real nature 
of Jesus as Son of God, in the Transfiguration Story, which by 
Matthew is expressly called a “‘ vision” (8paua), and which repeats 
the baptismal bath gol (“voice from heayen”). Because Paul 
was a “psychic” we should not make “ psychics ” of Cornelius, 
Peter, Zacharias, Joseph, James, John, and the authors of the 
Apocalypses. Vision is a literary device, in both the historical 
and the apocalyptic literature. 


CONVERSION AND VOCATION 49 


absolute certainty that Paul did not receive his 
apostleship to the Gentiles at second-hand; nory 
ean any believer in Damascus have played more 
than an external part in the great drama that was 
being enacted in his soul. 

It is with deeper interest that we turn from the 
mere outward reports, handed down in later tradi- 
tion, to the allusions of Paul’s own letters, which 
supply the inward significance of these events. 

The hints of outward corroboration already spoken 
of are soon told. Paul refers in Gal. i. 15-17 to 
his conversion in the midst of a career of persecu- 
tion by God’s revealing his Son “ in him,” confirm- 
ing Acts; while the expression “in me” certainly 
agrees better with that representation in which 
Paul’s companions are wholly outside the sphere of 
his experience. The reference is so brief that Paul 
does not even directly tell us where the event. took 
place; but after a positive denial of any kind of 
instruction, or opportunity for instruction, in the 
new faith, and a declaration that he “ went away 
into Arabia,” he shows it by implication in the 
addition, ‘ and again I returned to Damascus.” 

Further, in 1 Corinthians Paul twice speaks of 
having seen Jesus as the risen Lord, in one case 
connecting his apostleship with it. Finally in 2 Cor. 
iv. 6 he makes a most poetic allusion to it in words 
which seem to corroborate the sensation of dazzling 


f 


50 THE STORY OF ST. PAUL 


light spoken of in the story. He is speaking of the 
ministry of the new covenant as against that of 
Moses, who carried from his intercourse with God on 
Sinai a fading reflection of the glory he had seen. 
Then turning to the “ blinding of the eyes of the 
unbelieving ” by Satan,! “ so that the light of the 
glory of Christ, who is the image of God, may not 
dawn upon them,” he compares the new creation 
which those have experienced who have seen that 
dawn, with the creation of the physical world in 
Gen. i. 1: “ For God, who said Let light shine out 
of darkness, hath shined in our hearts to give the 
light of the knowledge of his glory in the face of 
Jesus Christ.” One can hardly doubt but he is 
thinking of the glory of that face as he had seen it 
when the world had been new created for him, and 
he had received his ministry of the new covenant.” 


1 In the Epistle of Pseudo Barnabas this blinding of the unbe- 
lieving Jews has become the work of “ an eyil angel.” It reappears 
in the Altercatio Theophili et Simonis, where the Jew on conversion 
recognizes the withdrawal of the Satanic veil. 

2 The figure is, as usual, an adaptation of one of the most beau- 
tiful of Messianic prophecy, by simple application to Jesus. In 
2 Sam. xxiii. 3-4 the Ruler of the House of David is compared to 
“the light of the morning when the sun riseth, a morning without 
clouds, when the tender grass springs from the earth by clear 
shining after rain.’’ The “Sun of righteousness that rises with 
healing beams” of Mal. iv. 2, and the “ Day-spring from on high ” 
of Lk. i. 78, are echoes of the same. Paul compares it to the cre- 
ative dawn of Gen.i. 3. ; 


CONVERSION AND VOCATION 51 


But we must go deeper than these mere surface 
correspondences, or disagreements. We must ask, 
What has Paul himself to tell us regarding the in- 
ner meaning of this great crisis of his life? What 
did he bring to it of his own? What did he receive 
in it? As we try to frame our answer to these 
vital questions you will see why it was needful first 
of all to discuss the formative influences of Paul’s 
life, and the question in what sense he was pre- 
pared, in what sense unprepared, for his conversion. 
‘ In one sense of the word, we are seeking an 
“explanation ” of Paul’s conversion, but not in the 
sense of defining its ultimate cause. “ Explana- 
tion” consists of the grouping of related facts in 
such a way that we may see all that it is humanly 
possible to see of the mode of the divine working 
in a given event. Ultimate causation is always in- 
scrutable. Explanation, then, may take away the 
“ magical” character of an event, for “ magic” has 
to do with the mode of operation. It cannot take 
away the “ supernatural” character of the simplest 
event ; for the word ‘“‘ supernatural,” if we use it in 
its right sense, has to do with the ultimate cause, 
the fact of the divine working. We may often, in 
cases like the conversion of Paul, wish to substitute . 
for the ancient word “miraculous” the modern “ pro- 
vidential,’’ which harmonizes better with the mod- 
ern conception of the divine Personality as involv- 


52 THE STORY OF ST. PAUL 


ing no element of caprice, and therefore achieving 
all its results without the slightest infraction or 
violation of law. There will be no religious loss in 
such a substitution, because we retain the essential 
religious idea of the “ supernatural,” namely, that, 
(whatever the mode of working, the effect is a re- 
¥ sponse of the divine Personality to the appeal of 
the finite.) 

1. The more or less intelligible factors of this ulti- 
mately inscrutable and “ supernatural” event seem 
to me to be four. First, and on the lowest scale, 
we may rank the purely physical. These will include 
the midday heat and burning sun of the desert, 
whose effect upon the parched and fevered traveler 
is well known. These include, too, the naturally 

‘ecstatic temperament of Paul, to whom, if ever to 
mortal man, the words “tense” and * strenuous ” 
apply in even his pre-Christian career, and whose 
subsequent experiences of ecstasy and vision cannot, 
of course, be overlooked. Finally, we must add as 
something on the border line between physical and 
hyper-physical conditions, the fearful nervous strain 
which had steeled that tender, compassionate heart 
against cries and tears and prayers, until, because 
he “thought he did God service,” Paul could dip 
his own hands in the blood of men like the martyr 
Stephen, and listen while with the face of an angel 
he prayed, “ Lord, lay not this sin to their charge.” 


CONVERSION AND VOCATION 53 


That strain was reaching its culmination now that 
Damascus lay just before him calling him to resume 
the bloody work. All these physical considerations 
_ have something to do with the crisis; but in them- 
selves they do not explain it. We may classify 
them simply as external “ providential ” conditions. 
__ 2. Paul is emphatic in his statements in Gala- 
tians, that he began his missionary career, not only 
without instruction from other Christians, but with- 
out any opportunity for it. “After three years” 
(therefore long after the time when Luke intro- 
duces him to the Apostles in Jerusalem and they 
are afraid of him because they have not yet heard 
of his conversion), — after three years of labor, 
says Paul, he went to visit Peter in Jerusalem and 
stayed with him two weeks, acquainting himself with 
_Peter’s store of recollections and teachings of the 
‘Lord ; and he saw besides not one of the apostolic 
body save James the Lord’s brother. Thereafter for 
eleven — perhaps fourteen — years he continued 
his missionary work without even being “ known by 
face to the churches in Judea.” I have already said 
enough of the entire disagreement of Luke from 
this. I mention it now for a different reason. The 
same Paul who resorted to Peter for knowledge of 
Jesus’ earthly life! cannot have regarded himself 


1 Paul says he went up for the purpose of “ hearing Peter’s 
story ’’ (icropjoa: Kynar). 


54 THE STORY OF ST. PAUL 


as fully equipped to “ preach the faith he once per- 
secuted ”” without any knowledge of Jesus’ life and 
teaching whereto his own distinctive gospel might 
attach itself. We may and must do full justice to 
the independence of Paul’s gospel; we may and 
shall recognize the surprisingly meagre reference in 
his Epistles to anything of the nature of Synoptic 
tradition: but that does not mean that Paul was 
ignorant of the life and teaching of Jesus, nor of 
fundamental Christian doctrine. Indeed, how could 
he be the leader of persecution against the sect, 
bear witness to the blasphemous character of their 
doctrines, cast his vote against them on a life 
and death issue, and yet know nothing of their his- 
tory and teachings? fe e may and must put down 
as latent elements in Paul’s mind, perhaps not ac- 
cepted, perhaps rather abhorred, but present never- 
theless, the raw material, so to speak, of his later 
faith) First of all, the Pauline persecution was not 
like the Sadducean of Acts i—v., a mere police 
measure against Messianistic agitation. It was a 
reversion to the Pharisaic charge of “ blasphemy,” 
and for its legal justification must have rested 
upon Deut. xiii., with its specific command to pur- 
sue the teacher of false worship to any “ one of thy 
cities.” Jesus had perished for an alleged claim of 
the title “ Son of man.” The nature of Paul’s bloody 
persecution “even unto foreign cities” implies, 


CONVERSION AND VOCATION 


even at that time, a Christology which to the Phar- 
isees’ eyes’ encroached upon the prerogatives of 
God. 

Moreover, we know of another doctrine, already 
fundamental with those whom Paul persecuted, 
namely, that “Christ died for our sins according 
to the Scriptures ;” in other words, the explanation 
of the cruel death of the Nazarene as vicarious, in 
accordance with Is. liii. Paul tells us in so many 
words that this doctrine was one which he received 
from Christians before him.! About this doctrine 
may well have revolved the disputes with Stephen 
in “the synagogue of the Cilicians.” At any rate, 
in his controversy with Peter at Antioch, where he 
is obliged to fall back on common ground, not in- 
volved in his own special gospel, Paul forces Peter 
to acknowledge that this doctrine of forgiveness 
of sin through Jesus’ death on the cross, and not 
through obedience to the Law, is the foundation 
of the Christian’s hope of salvation. Thereupon he 
proceeds to show that the Christian and the Jewish 
exclude one another. “ If righteousness is through 
_ the Law, then Christ died in vain.”’ As persecutor 

11 Cor. xy. 3, “I delivered (mrapédwxa) that which I received 
(xapéAaBov), how that Christ died for our sins according to the 
Scriptures.” The Greek words are technical terms for the inculea- 
tion of transmitted doctrine. It is a fact of peculiar significance 
that Paul nowhere makes the slightest independent use of this 
“ creat argument.” 


THE STORY OF ST. PAUL 


Paul had reasoned the other way from the same 
major premiss: “If righteousness is through the 
death of Christ, then the Law is in vain.” That 
was the ‘“‘ blasphemy against Moses.” 

Acts is perfectly right, therefore, in representing 
this great doctrine of vicarious atonement based on 
Is. liii. as fundamental even when Philip preached 
to the eunuch. If the Church had not found some 
such explanation of the awful catastrophe it never 
could have come into existence at all. On the 
other hand, it is perfectly true, as Paul, the keen 
logician, could see better than Peter, that the 
adoption of this doctrine (which of course was 
subsequent to the crucifixion), brought Christian- 
ity into an unexpected rivalry with Judaism as 
a new way of salvation. “The doctrine of the 
atonement is the gospel,” says Ritschl. “ If right 
eousness is through the Law,” says Paul, “then 
Christ died in vain.” Conversely, if righteousness 
is through the grace of God in Christ, then the 
Law is in vain. Legalism could ill brook even 
John the Baptist’s revival of the old prophetic 
doctrine of grace, “ Wash you, make you clean.” 
Pharisaism looked askance, to say the least, at the 
publicans and sinners flocking to a “baptism of 
repentance unto remission of sins.” When over 
and above this a doctrine of remission of sins 
through the vicarious suffering of the Nazarene was 


CONVERSION AND VOCATION 57 


promulgated, its opposition blazed into bloody per- 
secution. I might go farther and say that if Paul 
had any part in the disputes and martyrdom of 
Stephen, he must also have become familiar with 
that great doctrine wherein the limits of Jewish 
nationalism are first transcended, the doctrine of 
the access of Jew and Gentile “in one Spirit unto 
the Father.” This to the Pharisee “destroyed the 
temple ” by abolishing its exclusive sanctity as the 
one place of approach to God. It is the special 
onus of the charge against Stephen and the Hel- 
lenists, that in addition to their disloyalty to Moses 
and the Law they had “ spoken words against that 
Holy Place.” This may have added fuel to the 
special rage of the Pharisean zealot against Ste- 
phen and the Hellenists ; but Paul’s writings afford 
no allusion to the teaching of this broader school. 
We can only say with certainty, Paul was not un- 
familiar with the essential doctrines of the new 
sect. On the contrary, he saw much more clearly 
than they did what the logical outcome must inevi- 
tably be. 

Still, the mere existence in Paul’s mind of the 
raw material of conversion is not yet explanation. 
He had no sympathy with the doctrine of the vica- 
rious suffering of the innocent, though it is ear- 
nestly advocated by the author of 4 Maccabees.! 


1 In 4 Maccabees the Jewish martyr prays that God will take 


58 THE STORY OF ST. PAUL 
Paul probably knew, as Philo certainly does, that 


Deutero-Isaiah does not mean Jesus, nor even 
an impersonal coming Messiah, by his “ Suffering 
Servant ;” Isaiah means, as he states repeatedly, 
the martyr-people. “Thou, Israel, art my servant, 
Jacob is he whom I have chosen, the seed of Abra- 
ham, my friend.” Even after Paul had become a 
Christian, and of course had adopted in a form of 
his own this fundamental doctrine, it is surely no 
accident that in all his discussions of it he never 
once refers to the Isaian prophecy, though in Acts 
and 1 Peter it is a proof-text of constant resort. 
Paul’s knowledge of Christian doctrine is an unde- 
niable factor in his conversion. Moreover, it is in- 
ternal and not external; but we must still classify 
it as only a “ providential”’ condition, not an ex- 
planation. 
3. There is a third factor whose vital importance 
Paul himself forbids us to ignore. It is found in 
the seventh of Romans,—a chapter to which I 
have already alluded as autobiographic. If Phil. 
iti. 4-11 reveals to us “ righteousness” as the rul- 
ing passion of Paul’s whole pre-Christian career, 
the seventh chapter of Romans reveals to us the 
culmination of a soul-conflict in which the zealot 
for righteousness was involved d- through eircum- . 


his life as a substitute (avthpuyxov) for the life of his people, and 
make his outpoured blood a purification («a@dpoiov) for their sins. 


CONVERSION AND VOCATION 59 


stances which he himself has taught us to regard 
as providential. These are Paul’s references to that 
conflict : — 

« And I was alive apart from the law once: but 
when the commandment came, sin revived, and I 
died ; and the commandment which was unto life 
I found to be unto death: for sin, finding occa- 
sion through the commandment, beguiled me, and 
through it slew me. . . . For I know that in me, 
that is, in my flesh, dwelleth no good thing: for to 
will is present with me, but to do that which is 
good is not. For the good which I would I do not : 
but the evil which I would not, that I practice. 
_ For I delight in the law of God after the inward 
man: but I see a different law in my members, 
warring against the law of my mind and bringing 
me into captivity under the law of sm which is in 
my members. O wretched man that I am! who 
shall deliver me out of the body of this death ? 
— I thank God through Jesus Christ cur Lerd.”? 

We know that Saul of Tarsus had gene to Jeru- 
salem a Pharisee of the Pharisees, bent on achiev- 
ing “a righteousness of his én, even that which 
is of the Law,” as something immeasurably mors 
precious than any earthly treasure. Well, what 
"was the reason he could not be satisfied, as other 
Pharisees were, with punctilious obedience to the 

1 Rom. vii. 7-11, abridged. 


60 THE STORY OF ST. PAUL 


moral and ceremonial law, with the additonal 
merit acquired by almsgiving, fasting, and prayer? 
— This chapter of Romans tells us. In the first 
place, Saul could not be content with mere out- 
ward requirements. Was it his keener, innate, moral 
sense? Or was it that he must needs blush to con- 
fess that the Law of Moses established a less lofty 
moral standard than the Stoic preachers of his 
native Tarsus,! to say nothing of the Nazarene? 
Was it birth? Or was it bringing up? He him- 
self knows only that God wrought in both, shaping 
the unseen end. & all events, Paul’s pre-Christian 
interpretation of the moral requirement of the Law 
is characteristically Stoic. )He passes over all the 
ten commandments down fo the last, and there he 
rests. Not on the Hebrew, observe, but on the 
Greek. Paul can read the Hebrew, but he was 
brought up on the Greek, and to the end of his 
days kis common version was the Septuagint. In 
the Greek the tenth commandment is more exact- 
ing than all the rest. Alone of the ten it demands 
the conquest of self: od« émOvyjoes — “thou shalt 
not desire.” There, by Paul’s own statement, was 
his sticking-point, the very ideal of the Stoic, the 

1 Compare Seneca, De Benef. i. 1 ff. ap. Lightfoot, Phil. p. 283, 
for an extraordinary parallel to the higher law found in imitating 
the goodness and liberality of God, over against mere rule of 


_ thumb ethics, a contrast like that drawn in the Sermon on the 
Mount. 


CONVERSION AND VOCATION 61 


conquest of unworthy desire. “I had not known 
sin,” he writes, “ except through the law, for I had 
not known desire [7. e. as an evil] except the law 
had said, ‘ Thou shalt not desire ;’ but sin, finding 
oceasion, wrought in me through the command- 
ment all manner of [evil] desire, for apart from 
the Law sin is dead. And I was alive apart from 
the Law once, but the commandment which was 
ordained for life I found to be unto death.” Why? 
Because the deeper nature of the man, inborn or 
inbred, forbade him to be satisfied with the ex- 
ternal obedience of the average Pharisee. That 
inwardness which Jesus’ purity of soul led him to 
read into the law as its true requirement, Paul’s 
aweidyois had forced upon him also: but to Paul 
the requirement is impracticable, hopeless, because 
the Law is “ spiritual,” whereas “I am carnal, sold \, 
into slavery under sin.” The bitterness of death, not 
mere physical death, but the everlasting, hopeless 
death of the soul — that was what Saul of Tarsus 
was finding as the fruit of a pursuit of righteous- 
ness that stopped at no sacrifice, that impelled him 
to deeds from which his whole nature recoiled with / 
horror. “ Anything, anything that I may inherit / 

ternal life!” had been his ery; and this was his/ 

: Death, — bitter, hopeless, eternal death. uf 


1 Cf. 2 Cor. iii. 7-9, the law a “ ministration of death,” a 
** ministration of condemnation.” 


62 ~ THE STORY OF ST. PAUL 


I said that Paul’s nature, inborn or inbred, made 
it impossible for him to be satisfied with the exter- 
nalism of the ordinary Pharisee; but we are fortu- 
nately not without evidences of others who even 
under Judaism, whether by direct or indirect in- 
fluence of Stoic ethics, had come in like manner, to 
perceive that the supreme want is of a Deliverer 
from sin, and to this end from a carnal nature 
which has become the seat of sin. Two hundred 
years before Paul, a Jewish writer whose work 
Paul uses had groaned in almost Stoic language 
at our “ eorruptible body which weigheth down the 
soul,” accusing it as “held in pledge by sin,” the 
seat of that death which “ was not made by God” 
but “ ungodly men drew upon them,” as a “ poison 
of destruction in them.”! It is a later contemporary 
of Paul, the substance of whose Jewish doctrine 
betrays no trace of Christian influence, whose an- 
guished ery for deliverance from the same foes of 
our common humanity seems to echo the very ex- 
perience of Paul. «« O Adam, what hast thou done?” 
he cries, “‘for though it was thou that sinned, the 
evil is not fallen on thee alone, but upon all of us 
that come of thee. For what profit is it unto us if 


1 Wisdom ix. 15; i.4, 12-16. Compare Seneea, “ God made the 
world because he is good, and as the good never grudges anything 
good. He therefore made everything the best possible.” Hp. Mor. 
lxy. 10. 


CONVERSION AND VOCATION 63 


there be promised us an immortal time, whereas 
we have done the works that bring death?” + 
For this attitude of despair in face of the re- 
quirements of the moral law, above all the found- 
ing of it on the antithesis of flesh and spirit, the 
conception of the body as a prison-house of the 
soul, — this is not Hebrew thought. In what one of 
the prophets or psalmists can one find the concep- 
tion of flesh as the seat of sin and death, a drag- 
ing weight upon the soul till death has set it free ? 
Our nearest approach to this in the Old Testa- 
ment is the late penitential psalms; but even the 
ery “I was shapen in iniquity and in sin did my 
mother conceive me” is not the expression of any 
philosophy of natural inability. To find a doctrine 
of original sin we must come down to a period in 
which the pessimistic attitude of Greek philosophy 
toward material existence had begun to affect 
Hebrew thought, and man’s bodily frame and the 
material creation were no longer regarded as “ very 
good.” 2 
The book of the Wisdom of Solomon (30 B. c.— 
40 A. D.) represents a type of Pharisean thought 
dyed and double-dyed with Greek and particularly 
Stoic ideas. And Wisdom first enunciates a clear 


1 2 Esd. vii. 48-50; cf. viii. 30-36. 

2 Since the above was delivered, the admirable exposition by 
Tennant of the history of this doctrine has appeared in The 
Fall and Original Sin, Cambridge, 1903. 


64 THE STORY OF ST. PAUL 


and consistent doctrine of the Fall. All Hebrew lit- 
erature affords besides only the passage quoted 
but now from 2 Esdras, a book no less affected than 
Wisdom by Gentile thought, wherein Adam figures 
as the source of human woe by the inheritance of 
sin and death transmitted to his posterity. Have 
the prophets, the psalmists, or Jesus, anything to 
say about Adam, the Fall, and original sin? But 
Wisdom, from which Paul borrows repeatedly in 
Romans, declares that “ God created man to be im- 
mortal, but by envy of the Devil death came into 
the world.” Its doctrine is that the original creation 
was perfect and man made in God’s image, the heir 
of his immortality. The present creation represents 
only the ruin and corruption produced by the in- 
vasion of the great Seducer, the author of sin and 
death, which thenceforth reign supreme. 

The mortal anguish depicted in the seventh chap- 
ter of Romans is due to a new and deeper sense 
of sin. There is a profounder despair, rooted in a 
deeper philosophy of humanity than that which sent 
the simple peasants of Galilee, the publicans and 
sinners, flocking to the baptism of John, fully con- 
scious that under the technical requirements of the 
Law they fell far short of justification. Paul’s striv- 
ing for righteousness is something deeper even than 
the sense of unworthiness which led them to inter- 
pret the martyr-death of the Son of David, as a 


7 


CONVERSION AND VOCATION 65 


propitiation required by their sin. The cry that is 
voicing itself in the agony of this great soul is 
the ery of broad humanity, as only Stoic philoso- 
phy had hitherto struggled to give it utterance, the 
groaning of the human spirit against “this body of 
death,” the deadly legacy of the race. Israel longed 
for a Son of David to give her her promised king- 
dom. Her lowly ones, that had no “ righteousness 
of their own, ‘even that which is of the law,” went 
to the baptism of John, and thence to the blood 
of Calvary as tokens of divine forgiveness, making 
good the deficiency of their merit. But this sense 
of sin, this despair in the conflict between a law of 
“conscience” in the inner man and a dominion of 
sin in the “ flesh,” hopeless, fatal, unless death it- 
self may free the spirit from its insupportable bur- 
den — this need has a broader basis and demands 
a different type of Messiah. It is the ery of a lost 
humanity demanding a Son of man, rather than a 
Son of David, a Second Adam, who as life-giving 
Spirit shall undo the work of doom, and as the 
Man from heaven become head of a new and 
spiritual race. 

Saul of Tarsus may possibly have been ignorant 
of the ancient principle of Heraclitus of Ephesus, 
“ Out of death life: into life death.” There is no 
direct indebtedness on either side between Paul and 
Seneca for the comparison of the body to a prison- 


66 THE STORY OF ST. PAUL 


house, a heavy weight upon the soul, nor for the 
comparison of life to a warfare against imperious 
desire. Paul need not ever haye heard a Cynic 
preacher declare, “ We shall ever be obliged to pro- 
nounce the same sentence on ourselves, that we are 
evil, that we have been evil, and (I add it unwill- 
ingly) we shall be evil ; ”! nor for the saying, “ The 
first and greatest punishment of sinners is the fact 
of having sinned.” He need not have known the 
Stoic principle that “‘No man can be righteous 
without God,”’? nor that the indwelling Spirit’ of 
God is man’s only hope of victory over fleshly im- 
pulse; but whether known or unknown to Paul, 
his consciousness of the need of a delivering God 
(Gcds cwryp), which wrings from him the ery for an 
emancipation of the spirit, is no mere Jewish con- 
sciousness. It is a groaning humanity, striving for 
righteousness against the burden of sin and death, 
that speaks from the soul of Saul on the road to 
Damascus: “ O wretched man that I am, who shall 
deliver me from this body, this body of death?” 

That agony of soul, as of some blind Titan strug- 
gling against the overwhelming flood, ignorant that 
the outstretched hand of a “ Saviour God” is al- 
ready within reach —that is the third factor that 
goes to make up the providential conditions of 
Paul’s experience. 


1 De Benef. i. 10. 2 Ep. Mor. xli. 


CONVERSION AND VOCATION 67 


4. And lastly there is that without which all 
these factors, external and internal, can no more 
be called an “explanation” than intermingling 
clouds of oxygen and hydrogen are an explanation 
of their product without the exploding spark. Be- 
sides these providential conditions, without and 
within the man, there was, we believe, a cause 
from beyond himself. There was One who had not 
left comfortless the little band of stricken, despair- 
ing followers, but had come unto them, had rallied 
them, had infused into them the power to make his 
cause after all victorious. There was the grace of 
God in Jesus Christ, who through death had over- 
come the power of death, and who now drew near 
once more to meet the need of our common human- 
ity, “groping after God” in the person of its great 
unconscious representative. The cause of Paul’s 
conversion was the grace of God in Jesus Christ, 
changing the ery of agony, “ Who shall deliver 
me,” on his very lips, into the sigh of utter grati- 
tude and peace: “I thank my God, through 
Jesug¥ Christ our Lord.” The Son of God had been 
revealed “in” Paul. 


oe 


per 


LECTURE III 


THE PROPAGATION OF THE GOSPEL AS A 
WORLD-RELIGION 


THE preceding lectures will have failed of their ob- 
ject if it has not already become in some measure 
apparent why Paul should speak of his conversion 
as if the very experience itself was a summons to 
proclaim Christ among the Gentiles.1 

For reasons which have to do with the whole 
structure of the book— or rather of its principal 
Jewish-Christian source — Acts represents the mat- 
ter quite otherwise. As we shall see, its compiler 
manages for his own reasons to hold back this ac- 
tivity of Paul among the Gentiles until a period, 


1 Gal. i. 15, “ God, who set me apart from my mother’s womb, 
and called me through his grace, revealed his Son in me in order 
that I might preach him among the Gentiles.”” Compare Eph. iii. 
2-12. ‘‘There was given me a stewardship of the grace of God 
for you. The mystery hid in other generations from the sons of 
men was made known to me by revelation, that the Gentiles are 
fellow-heirs, and fellow-members of the body, and fellow-par- 
takers of the promise (with Israel) in the person of Christ. . . . I 
was intrusted with the mission of preaching to Gentiles, to make 
all men —nay, the whole universe of intelligent beings, who be- 
hold the Church as the people of God’s new creation — under- 
stand the wisdom of God’s creative and proyidential working ” 
(paraphrased and abridged). 


THE PROPAGATION OF THE GOSPEL _ 69 


estimated in other early Jewish-Christian writings 
at twelve years, during which Israel is to have the 
exclusive opportunity. Paul is a chosen vessel in- 
tended by the Lord ultimately to bear his name 
before Gentiles and kings. But if we ask why this 
was so, we can draw no conclusion from Luke’s con- 
flicting reports; for they are clearly not intended 
to record certain definite words or impressions on 
Saul’s sensorium, but to interpret for us his ex- 
perience in the light of his known career. Paul’s 
career as a missionary to the Gentiles does not 
begin, according to “ Luke,” until Barnabas and he 
are “set apart” under the church in Antioch, by 
special direction of the Spirit, for the work where- 
unto God was then calling them. (Acts xiii. 1-3.) 

It is when we turn to Paul’s autobiographic 
references, his allusions to his own state of mind 
before, and during, and after the great crisis, that 
we begin to realize why-it had for him the special 
sense of a mission to the Gentiles, and why he took 
the action that-at first sight appears so strange, of 
conducting as it were an independent mission, turn- 
ing his back not only on his own people, and Jerusa- 
lem, but even on “those that were Apostles before” 
him, and on “the churches of Judea that were in 
Christ.” 

Both Paul’s utterances and his silence are highly 
unfavorable to the idea that he had the conscious- 


70 THE STORY OF ST. PAUL 


ness of any spoken words of special commission, 
beyond those which related to his personal attitude 
toward the Nazarene: “I am Jesus, whom thou 
persecutest; it is hard for thee to kick against the 
goad.” The rest of Luke’s report, which so widely 
varies in the parallel narratives, forms no part of 
the actual experience of the vision. For on the one 
hand it is noteworthy that Paul, in claiming for 
himself and Barnabas the exclusive field of the 
Gentile world, does not urge that Jesus had so 
directed, but that God had wrought in him to this 
end, as he had wrought in Peter toward a different 
end, and had confirmed the providential predispo- 
sition by the abundant fruits he had enabled Paul 
to reap. On the other hand, any supposition of a 
spoken direction to go to the Gentiles becomes 
wholly superfluous when we realize the significance, 
as Paul himself looks at it, of the original reve- 
lation of the Son of God in him. 

As we have seen, Paul had been brought to 
Christ by a totally different road from Peter and 
the older Apostles. There is not the slightest indi- 
cation that they had ever concerned themselves 
about Adam and original sin, or the antithesis of 
flesh and spirit. They certainly were in no agony 
of soul over natural inability and the requirement 
of righteousness, the doom of humanity through the 
irrepressible conflict of the “‘ law of sin in the mem- 


THE PROPAGATION OF THE GOSPEL  7i 


bers warring against the law of the mind.” This 
was probably “all Greek” to them, even if they 
felt some general sympathy with it. 

Of course their Messianic hope had its ethical 
and religious aspects. They were not mere zealots, 
though one of them bears the cognomen. They 
were of those who had gone out along with the pub- 
licans and sinners to John’s baptism of repentance 
for the forgiveness of sins, because they were quite 
aware that from the standpoint of strict legalism they 
were by no means ready for the coming Messianic 
kingdom, which would be initiated by a “ gather- 
ing out ” from the Elect People “ of all things that 
offend.” They knew it could be given only to a 
righteous people, and they knew well enough that 
they were not “righteous.” Their simple, unsophis- 
ticated conscience joyfully responded to the simpler 
“hicher law” of the Sermon on the Mount. As 
against the scrupulous, pettifogging, minute casuis- 
try which constituted the righteousness of scribes 
and Pharisees, it was indeed an easy yoke, and gave 
them rest for their heavy-laden souls. Jesus indeed 
made no concealment of the fact that this inner 
standard was in reality more exacting than that 
of scribe and Pharisee; but the question of moral 
ability or inability never obtrudes itself upon their 
horizon. The “new commandment” was certainly 
as much simpler as it was truer to man’s moral 


72 THE STORY OF ST. PAUL 


sense; and the God in whose name it was given ~ 


was set forth not as an inexorable taskmaster 
and judge, but as a Father in Heaven. That made 
the keeping of it immeasurably more hopeful for 
the common man. If all the commandment was 
summed up in the twofold law of love, and to ob- 
serve this was “ much more than all whole burnt 
offering and sacrifice,” then the preaching of the 
Prophet of Nazareth was indeed glad tidings: for 
the lowly, however indignant those who conceived 
themselves to “need no repentance” might be to 
see the loosing of the “ heavy burdens and grievous 
to be borne ” of scribal imposition. 

Thus when the campaign of education in Galilee 
had been forcibly ended, and Jesus, ready for a last 
effort at Jerusalem, disclosed the real nature of his 
mission, something had undoubtedly been accom- 
plished to emphasize the religious and ethical side 
of his disciples’ anticipations of the Messianic king- 
dom. Peter and the rest did not conceive it in the 
crudely material and political sense that they might 
have done without their year or more of association 
with One to whom its essential content was the filial 
relation of each individual in it to the Heavenly 
Father. Nothing, however, can be more certain than 
that Peter and James and John —and, if these, then 
certainly the rest — expected an actual reénthrone- 
ment of the Davidic dynasty in the person of Jesus, 


—_ 


THE PROPAGATION OF THE GOSPEL 73 


the “restoration of the kingdom to Israel,’ the 
beginning of a new political and social order, with 
the poor getting their rights in domestic affairs, 
“the last first,’ and a similar reversal of fortune 
in the relative position of Israel and the Gentiles. 
They would not even admit the prospect of failure 
and martyr-death of which Jesus forewarned them. 
They believed the kingdom of God was immediately 
to appear, and were correspondingly despairing when 
the catastrophe came, when there was no uprising 
even of the Galilean multitude, to say nothing of 
the divine intervention on which Jesus had taught 
them rather to rely. 

That was a catastrophe indeed; but it had the 
effect which other catastrophes had had before in 
Israel’s religious history. Faith rose from it purified 
and spiritualized. The teaching of Jesus came back 
to mind and was read in a new light. Their hearts 
burned within them as they read in the Scriptures 
that these things must needs be so, and that ‘* Mes- 
siah must through suffering enter into his glory.” 
The Messianic kingdom as they conceived it now 
was both postponed and spiritualized. The cost was 
fearful, but as Jesus had foreseen, the gain was in- 
estimable. The Messianic kingdom was postponed, 
but not for long. A brief period must intervene 
wherein opportunity of repentance should be given 
to Israel, so unready for the crisis; yes, and to 


74 THE STORY OF ST. PAUL 


‘“‘all that are afar off, even as many as the Laat 
our God shall call.” 

The same prophecy, in fact, which furnished the 
Church with its first explanation of the tragedy of 
the cross, is also that which alone in Jewish litera- 
ture conceives of Jehovah’s suffering Servant as set 
for “a light to lighten the Gentiles.” 1 It was also 
spiritualized. The Twelve were conscious now that 
they had been “considering the things that be of 
men.” They could not but realize, after their own 
cowardly flight, how ill prepared were even they 
themselves for the Messianic kingdom. Looked at 
in the perspective of Calvary, it seemed not only a 
broader, but a more spiritual thing. The king was 
no longer a Son of David in the flesh, but the 
Danielic Son of man revealed in the glory of God, 
now visibly conqueror of death. Yes, there was 
deep need in themselves, as well as in Israel, to 
repent and be baptized every one of them for the 
remission of their sins. In fact, right here was the 
explanation so sorely needed of that dark day of 
Calvary. The Christ had suffered for them, “ the 


1 On the influence of Deutero-Isaiah in determining the wider 
outlook of Jesus’ followers after his death, see Chase, Credibility 
of Acts, Lecture II. No better commentary on the real sense of 
this aspect of the Isaian doctrine of the Servant can be had than 
the paraphrase in Apocalypse of Baruch, i. 4, quoted by Chase: “I 
will scatter this people among the Gentiles that they may do doar 
to the Gentiles.” 


THE PROPAGATION OF THE GOSPEL 75 


chastisement of their peace was laid upon him.” } 
If, therefore, Israel would now repent and turn again _ 
from their sins, God would soon “send the ap- 
pointed Christ, even Jesus, whom the heaven must 
receive until the times of the restoration of all 
things, whereof God spake by the mouth of his 
holy prophets which have been since the world 
began.” 

Such is the preaching of Peter as we learn it 
from the early chapters of Acts. Certainly it con- 
tains the germs of those great doctrines of vicari- 
ous atonement and universality of redemption, 
which, as already shown, were destined to bring 
Christianity into the position of a new way of sal- 
vation, a rival to Judaistic legalism, yes, even to 
transcend the mother-faith by becoming a world- 
religion. Certainly the germs; but certainly no 
more than the germs: and these quite uncon- 
sciously to Peter and the Eleven. We look in vain. 
through all these early exhortations for the faintest 
trace of the Pauline Christology, the doctrine of a 
Second Adam, delivering humanity from the curse 
of Eden, Messiah conceived as the archetypal, spir- 
itual Man, the dvOpwros éroupavios, the preéxistent 
One “ made in the form of God,” who enters into 
humanity as the God-sent spiritual reénforcement 
without which its struggle of spirit against flesh is 

1 Cf. 1 Pet. ii. 21-24. 


76 THE STORY OF ST PAUL ie . 
ho. It 


a conflict of despair issuing in eternal deat 

is not the Christianity of Peter, nor even the Chris- 
tianity of Peter plus that of Stephen, to which 
Paul was converted.) Their Christ was still pri- 
marily the Son of David,? in whom was to be ful- 
filled at last, now that a righteous, or at least a 
repentant, forgiven and justified people are pre- 
pared for him, “the oath which God sware unto 
Abraham our father, that we, being delivered out of 
the hand of all our enemies, should serve him in 
holiness and righteousness all our days.” Even the 
Danielic figure of the Son of man on the clouds 
of heaven recedes into the background and gives 
place to that of the Prophet like unto Moses, or 
the suffering Servant of Jehovah. Paul’s Christ 
was the Son of God, Head of a new humanity, be- 


1 The remark is just that in Paul the self-designation of Jesus, 
“Son of man,” which would be unintelligible to his Greek con- 
verts, unfamiliar as they were with the apocalyptie terminology, 
is changed to &y@pwmos émoupdyios, “ heavenly man,” a conception 
readily intelligible to readers familiar with the Platonic-Stoic con- 
ception of the ideal or divine man in whom spirit and the “ law of 
the mind” haye won their complete victory over “ desire’ and the 
fleshly tenement of decay. On the other hand, it is equally re- 
markable that in the non-Pauline church the title “Son of man” 
is simply dropped. Once, in his supreme moment, it appears on 
the lips of Stephen (Acts vii. 56). After that it is completely lost. 
The disappearance coincides with the transformation of the prim- 
itive eschatology, already traceable in Mk. xiii. when compared 
with Mt. xxiv. 

2 Cf. Acts ii. 25-52. 


THE PROPAGATION OF THE GOSPEL 17 


ginning of the second, spiritual creation, ‘a life- 
giving spirit,” through whom the inheritance of sin 
and death entailed through the first Adam “ of the 
earth earthy” is overcome. This is a “ Deliverer 
God,” who gives meaning to the ancient maxim 
*“ Out of death life: into life death,” inasmuch as 
it is by an ethical participation in his obedience 
unto death that we human slaves of flesh and sin 
become sharers also of his resurrection and eternal 
life of glory. Paul’s Christology includes Peter’s, 
but Peter’s is very far, as yet at least, from includ- 
ing Paul’s. This archetypal “ heavenly man,” this 
glorious One, revealed as conqueror over death, 
having exchanged the body of his humiliation for 
one whose glory outshines sun and stars, is indeed 
no other than that same Jesus whom Paul had 
been persecuting. Historically he is the Messiah of 
Israel, “‘ born of the seed of David according to the 
flesh,” but now revealed by the power of the resur- 
rection to Paul as how much more! The preéxist- 
ent Son of God, the Redeemer of humanity! Over- 
whelmed by this larger insight, was Paul to go and 
put himself under the instruction of those who were 
Apostles before him? No, Paul knew well enough, 
though he does not say it, that they had far more 
to learn of him than he of them, as to the real sig- 
nificance of Jesus’ Messiahship. They could tell 
him nothing that he did not know before of a Mes- 


78 THE STORY OF ST. PAUL 


siahship after the flesh.1 He had all too much for 
them to take in of the larger revelation, the redemp- 
tion of humanity by a Christ in whom, since he is 
the archetypal divine man, “ there can be neither 
Jew nor Greek, bond nor free, neither male nor fe- 
male,” but all, “ circumcision and uncireumcision, 
barbarian, Scythian, bondman, freemen, are one new 
man in Christ Jesus.” 

As Paul had come to his gospel and his Christ 
along a totally different road, and yet his Christ 
was the same Jesus, only far more profoundly and 
broadly conceived, both in the significance of his 
teaching and of his life; so the need which was 
met by this gospel was not the mere hope of Israel, 
but the hope of the world. Peter’s gospel was the 
promise to Abraham and his seed, together with 
such from those that were afar off as the Lord, 
Abraham’s God, should call to lay hold upon the 
skirts of him that is a Jew. Paul’s is to the chil- 
dren of Adam. Nay, Paul’s conception of redemp- 
tion goes even back of Adam to the creation itself, 
subject as it is, not willingly, nor for its fault, to 
“‘ vanity,” the creation that groans in its bondage 
waiting for the manifestation of the new humanity, 
the sons of God. That which in other generations 
was not made known unto tlie sons of men, namely, 
the meaning of existence, the purpose of God in 

1 2 Cor. v. 16. 


THE PROPAGATION OF THE GOSPEL 79 


creation and history, redemption, had been revealed 
to him, Paul, by the vision of “the Man that is to 
be,” the type and head of a spiritual humanity, vic- 
torious over sin and flesh and death, the whole curse 
entailed from Eden. He is the Alpha as arche- 
type, the Omega as heir and lord of the creation. 
How could Paul, after such a revelation, go to men 
whose ideas of Christ as a Jewish Messiah he knew 
to be incomparably more limited than his own? 
How could he lay before them, in the attitude of a 
neophyte and learner, the gospel which had been 
delivered to him by the act of God from heaven, 
but which they could not possibly appreciate as he 
did? Rather, as Jesus after the vision at Jordan 
was driven by the Spirit into the wilderness, Saul 
“conferred not with flesh and blood, neither went 
up to Jerusalem to them which were Apostles 
before him, but went away into Arabia,” where 
Elijah had sought communion with God, and thence 
returned to begin his task among the Gentiles, 
where the word of Christ had “ apprehended ” him, 
at Damascus. 

Besides, the great new truths that were seething 
in Paul’s soul and struggling for utterance would 
have a poor reception in Israel. The gospel he had 
received was a gospel for the Gentile world, and 
one which only the Gentile world could easily 
tolerate. It met the need not of the Jew as such, 


80 THE STORY OF ST. PAUL 


but of our common humanity. It taught “a right- 
eousness of God by faith unto faith,” beside which 
that of the Law was ‘in vain.” It “ destroyed the 
Temple” by teaching “access for Jew and Gen- 
tile in one Spirit unto the Father;” for union 
with Christ in ethical death and resurrection was 
entrance into the filial relation. To offer these 
ideas to Israel Paul knew to be worse than hope- 
less. It would only carry discord into the bosom 
of the infant Church. Finally, here were all the 
Twelve binding their united efforts to win tht lost 
sheep of the house of Israel, and he alone had felt 
and realized the cry of the vast world outside, 
“ oroping after God, if haply they might feel after 
him and find him.” 

“ Hopeless, lifting blinded eyes 

_To the silence of the skies.” 

If, like the Master he now served, he would 
‘call not the righteous but sinners,” where should 
Paul turn, save to “ the world that lieth in wicked- 
ness” under the gloom of the impending “ wrath 
of God”? Hence it was not until after three 
years of missionary labor that Paul made his one 
brief and furtive visit to Jerusalem to draw on 
Peter’s stores of personal recollection of the Lord. 

It is true that the Book of Acts takes for 
granted that from the very outset the Twelve re- 
garded themselves as commissioned to the whole 


THE PROPAGATION OF THE GOSPEL 81 


world. From the very day of the resurrection the 
little company assembled in Jerusalem stand ready 
for the work of witnesses “in Jerusalem and Ju- 
dza and Samaria, and unto the uttermost: parts of 
the earth.” The earlier representations of Matthew 
and Mark notwithstanding, the Jerusalem com- 
munity thus appears as constant from the very 
start. There was no scattering of the sheep when 
the shepherd was smitten.1 They did not return to 
Galilee. Quietly waiting in Jerusalem for the pro- 
mise of the Father, they contemplated from the 
start the broadest horizon, and carried the work in 
widening circles to the very ends of the earth. In 
_ conformity with this conception of the Apostles, 
Acts has no idea whatever of admitting Paul’s 
claim to be the one appointed by God an Apostle 
to the Gentiles, even as Peter to the Circumcision. 
On the contrary, with absolute distinctness and 
explicitness this book makes Peter say at the 
council in Jerusalem, ‘“‘ Brethren, ye know how 
that a good while ago God made choice among you 
that by my mouth the Gentiles should hear the 
word of the Gospel and believe.” Yet this, be it 
understood, is the very same occasion as to which 
Paul himself reports that he convinced the pillar 
Apostles, Peter, James, and John, that “as God 


1 This certainly authentic saying of Jesus on the night of Geth- 
semane is omitted in Luke’s gospel. 


82 THE STORY OF ST. PAUL 


had wrought in Peter for an apostleship to the 
circumcision, so God had wrought in him, Paul, 
for an apostleship to the Gentiles.” He even tells 
us that thereupon they exchanged a solemn pledge 
by the right hand of covenant that Peter and the 
rest should go to the Jews, and he and Barnabas 
to the Gentiles! 

It is the same exaltation of the original Twelve 
which accounts for the extraordinary contradictions 
of Paul in Acts ix. where Paul begins his ministry 
in Jerusalem under tutelage of the Twelve, sent 
forth by them to Tarsus, and thence brought back 
by Barnabas to Antioch, whence Barnabas and 
Saul — not Saul and Barnabas — are at last, some 
twelve to fourteen years after Paul’s conversion, 
after due and careful preparation, fasting, and 
prayer, set apart by the church in Antioch, by 
direction of the Spirit, for the special work of a 
mission among the Gentiles. This, of course, is 
considerably after the time when all the questions 
pertaining to Gentile missions, including even that 
about eating together, which made the trouble at 
Antioch described in Gal. ii. 10-21, have been 
settled by Peter in the test case of Cornelius. 
Then Paul is permitted to take up his career. 
But not as if he were at all on an equality with 
the Twelve. Far from it. Only once does Acts 
allow him the title of “apostle” at all, and then 


THE PROPAGATION OF THE GOSPEL 83 


only in the broader sense of delegate, and as 
sharer in it with Barnabas, his fellow-delegate from 
the church in Antioch. At Lystra, we are told, 
“‘when the apostles, Barnabas and Paul [not yet 
Paul and Barnabas], heard [of the proposed wor- 
ship] they rent their garments,” and tried to stop it. 
Tn all the other twenty-nine cases of Acts, the word 
“apostle” is strictly reserved for the holy Twelve. 
Indeed, the author shows how impossible it would 
be for him to admit Paul to that circle, where he 
describes how they selected a successor to Judas. 
Peter says, “Of the men which have companied 
with us all the time that the Lord Jesus went in 
and went out among us, beginning from the bap- 
tism of John . . . of these one must be chosen.” 
So the Eleven, in genuine Jewish fashion, cast 
lots, and made up their minds that the Lord had 
chosen Matthias ; but the Lord preferred to choose 
for himself, and he selected Paul. 

Acts does reluctantly permit us to see that there 
may have been some as it were irregular and 
unauthorized conversions of Gentiles before Peter 

1 The narrower sense is a specialization which as late as the 


Teaching of the Twelve Apostles (120 a.p.) has not yet displaced the 
general meaning of “delegate.” In Paul, Luke, and Revelation 


ce 


“apostle of the Lord” is often shortened to simple “apostle,” 
especially where the sense is made clear by “the twelve” or 
otherwise. Paul also speaks, however, of Silas, of Andronicus and 
” He himself is “an 


apostle, not of men, nor through a man, but of God.” 


Junias, and perhaps of James, as “ apostles. 


84 THE STORY OF ST. PAUL 


was divinely commissioned to Cornelius. The Sa- 
maritans, who stood halfway between Jew and 
heathen, were converted by Philip, Stephen’s fellow 
evangelist. However, the matter was at once taken 
in control by the Apostles, who sent down Peter 
and John from Jerusalem, and the gift of tongues 
and other manifestations of the Spirit were reserved 
until after the imposition of the Apostles’ hands. 
This same precipitate Philip also converted and 
baptized an Ethiopian eunuch; but he was already 
a convert to Judaism, and not strictly a heathen.t 

Philip actually passes through the Philistine 
cities to Czsarea, and is on the very point of found- 
ing the church there in the capital of the procura- 
tordom of Galilee, Samaria, and Judza, when Luke 
breaks off from the source he is here following to 
introduce Peter and Cornelius in the nick of time. 
The really reckless ones were some unknown 
adherents of the radical Stephen that were scat- . 
tered abroad at the time of Stephen’s martyrdom, 
and while their activity is not related until after the 
episode of Cornelius, and the author of Acts is 
careful to insist that “ they spake the word to none 
save only to Jews,” in the next breath he takes it 
back and admits that “there were some of them, 
men of Cyprus [Barnabas was of Cyprus] and 
Cyrene [Lucius, one of the leading spirits at 


1 The question of circumcision could not, of course, be raised. 


THE PROPAGATION OF THE GOSPEL 85 


Antioch was of Cyrene], who when they were 
come to Antioch spake unto the Hellenists also, 
preaching the Lord Jesus.” 

The text is given as it stands in all the best and 
most ancient manuscripts, in spite of its making 
nonsense. The Hellenists were Greek-speaking 
Jews, and nobody could have the slightest objec- 
tion to Jews hearing the Gospel. Therefore the 
later manuscripts and modern versions, as our own 
Authorized and Revised, correct to “ Hellenes;”’ 
but Hellenists is what the author wrote. “For the 
reason he changed “ Hellenes ” to “ Hellenists” is 
because he could not permit unknown, obscure fugi- 
tives from the persecution that arose about Stephen 
to rob Peter of the honor of being the first to carry 
the Gospel to the Gentiles. The source must have 
had «Hellenes,” as the sense requires ; the editor 
is responsible for the text as it stands. 

In reality God’s providence did not wait upon 
the caution of Peter and the Eleven. The Gos- 
pel spread in a dozen directions; and earnest 
men, especially those of the school of Stephen and 


1 Chase, Credibility of Acts, p. 83, admits ‘EAAnvicrds to be the 
true reading, as one would expect from a textual critic of such 
unquestioned merit. He seems on the point of pronouncing a 
purely scientific judgment, when suddenly, without other ostensi- 
ble reason than to smooth the difficulty he proposes, confessedly 
without one shred of manuscript evidence, to strike out the 


inconvenient kal ! 


86 THE STORY OF ST. PAUL 


Philip, did not stop to ask whether a man was a 
Jew or not, before they told him the story of the 
cross. Long before the comparatively heavy-witted 
Galileans had begun to think of looking beyond 
their petty province, and Peter had won the con- 
vert that seemed to him and the Jerusalem church 
of such epoch-making importance,! Paul had begun 
systematic and vigorous labor, on a purely univer- 
salistic basis, at Damascus. Certainly not much 
later, perhaps even earlier, the unknown fugitives 
of Acts xi. 20 had planted a free non-legalistic 
gospel in Antioch, the vast Greek metropolis of 
Syria. The new sect received there the designa- 
tion “ Christians,” while elsewhere they were either 
not differentiated at all from other Jews, or were 
known as Nazarenes or Galileans. The invention 
of the new name alone would prove that others 
than Jews were included, even did we not have 
Gal. ii. 12, 13, with its plain reference to a Jewish 
and a Gentile element there. Thus Antioch, at least 

1 Cornelius is to the church of Cxsarea (next to Jerusalem, or 
even beyond it, in importance) what Sergius Paulus is to that of 
Paphos, the jailer to Philippi, Clement (early identified with 
Flavius Clemens of the imperial family) to Rome, Andronicus to 
Ephesus, tc. Tradition associated the founding of the churches 
with important converts. The simpler account of Acts viii. 40, 
with no mention of Cornelius, is of course historically preferable ; 
especially as the Diary in Acts xxi. 8 shows Philip still in Cxsarea 


and the host of Paul. In later legend Peter supplants in similar 
fashion the actual founders of the church in Rome. 


THE PROPAGATION OF THE GOSPEL 87 


a partially Gentile church, became a second cradle 
of the faith, which already was threatening to 
become something far more important than a mere 
new sect of Judaism. 

Meantime Paul was at work in Damascus. We 
know he was there as late as the year 38, because 
a stray fragment, Pauline, but apparently out of 
connection with its context, in 2 Cor. xi. 32, 33, 
tells us he escaped in a basket let down through a 
window over the city wall, escaping “the ethnarch 
under Aretas the king.” No mere commercial re- 
presentative, or, as we should call him, “ consul,” 
of a petty Arabian prince could guard a Roman 
frontier city to prevent the escape of a free Roman 
citizen! The ethnarch was indeed “ governor under 
Aretas the king,” as our Revised Version reads; 
but we have reason to believe that Damascus was 
a Roman city until, in all probability, Caligula, in 
the second year of his reign,” readjusting the fron- 
tiers of the East, presented it to Aretas, toward 
whom he had the same reasons for friendly feeling 
as his predecessor, Tiberius, for hostile. Paul’s 


1 O. Holtzmann, in his Neutestamentliche Zeitgeschichte, seeks to 
avoid the difficulty by this rendering of e@vapxos. 

2 Suetonius, Calig. xvi. 

8 Tiberius’ command to Vitellius, proconsul of Syria, to take 
Aretas, dead or alive, was prevented from execution only by the 
news of Tiberius’ death, which reached Vitellius in Jerusalem in 
April, a. D. 37. ‘a 


88 THE STORY OF ST. PAUL 


escape from Damascus, accordingly, which Luke 
places almost immediately after his conversion, 
before the news of it has reached Jerusalem, can- 
not have been earlier than 38, and may haye been 
several years later. Paul’s conversion was certainly 
not later than/36, when Caiaphas was deposed, and 
probably was several years earlier. This incident 
belongs, accordingly, not before, but after Paul’s 
furtive two weeks’ visit to Jerusalem. We must 
place it in the period of missionary activity con- 
cerning which we know nothing except the bare 
statement of Gal. i. 22-24, that he “ came into the 
regions of Syria and Cilicia,” working, it would 
seem, northwestward from Damascus, on the south- 
eastern border of Syria, toward his native province. 
Either thirteen or fifteen years were spent in this 
mission field, Paul preaching his gospel of re- 
demption for Jew and Gentile without the yoke 
of the law, “unknown by face to the churches of 
Judza which were in Christ,” but believing: him- 
self to be fundamentally in accord with them, and 
they on their part praising God for what little 
they heard of his activity, that he was now preach- 
ing the same faith he once persecuted. 

It was a career of hardship, suffering, adventure : 
fightings without, cares, anxieties, burdens within, 
lit up, however, by glorious revelations and visions 
of the Lord, including one more fully described in 


THE PROPAGATION OF THE GOSPEL 89 


2 Cor. xii. 1-4, wherein he was caught up seem- 
ingly to the third heaven! and heard unutterable 
things. This experience Paul dates ‘‘ above fourteen 
years before,” 7. e. A. D. 40, when he was “in the 
regions of Syria and Cilicia.” It was offset by a 
recurrent and distressing malady. Five times dur- 
ing this earlier missionary career Paul suffered the 
Mosaic scourging of the synagogue, once or more 


beatings by the Roman lictors’ rods. Three times , »/ 


he suffered shipwreck, once spending a whole night’ 
and day in the deep, in perils by rivers, by robbers, 
by his fellow countrymen, by Gentiles, by false 
brethren, from the city, the wilderness, the sea. Of 
all this we know nothing save the bare facts. 
What Luke has to tell us is almost worse than 
nothing, for it is manifestly inaccurate, and is dom- 
inated by his ruling idea of the Twelve Apostles 
in Jerusalem as the sole “ board of commissioners 
for foreign missions.” He knows of the escape 
from Damascus, though not when it occurred, and 
that is all. As for Paul’s independent missionary 
career of some fifteen years, he simply excludes it 
altogether. He knows that when Paul came to 
Antioch, which became his base for the so-called 
First Missionary Journey, with its momentous con- 


1 Current apocalypse conceived of seven heavens, the “ Para- 
dise’’ visited by Panl in the spirit, the place of departed saints, 
being placed by some in the fourth, some in the third, as here. 


90 THE STORY OF ST. PAUL 


sequences, he came there from Cilicia. We have 
no reason to question the fact that Tarsus was 
Paul’s headquarters at the time. That is Luke’s 
one historical datum. To interpret the narrative of 
Acts by itself alone, however, would involve an 
utterly false conception. We should think of Paul 
not as avoiding Jerusalem and the apostolic body, 
to pursue an independent course as God’s envoy to 
the Gentiles, but as going to Jerusalem, after “a 
number of days,” so soon as he had “ confounded 
the Jews which dwelt in Damascus” and escaped 
their rage, and as there introduced by Barnabas} 
to the frightened apostolic body, with an account 
of his conversion. We should think of him as 
“ going in and out with the Twelve, boldly preach- 
ing in the name of the Lord,” in particular taking 
up the work of Stephen among the Hellenists 
(Jews), until at last, after some ten years, per- 
haps, plots of the Jews against his life compel the 
church dignitaries to “send him away” to his 
native city, there apparently to wait until called 
for. Of his taking it into his head even at this 
time to start a Gentile mission there is not the 
slightest idea. All that must wait for Peter to 
begin in the tenth chapter with the episode of Cor- 
nelius. There, for the first time, by direct divine 


1 Paul seems to have been really introduced to the church in 
Antioch by Barnabas. 


THE PROPAGATION OF THE GOSPEL 91 


revelation, the discovery is made to Peter, and by 
him made known to the Church, that “to the 
Gentiles also God hath granted repentance unto 
life.” 

If we turn from this thoroughly Jewish-Christian 
account in Acts ix. 1—-xi. 18 to one which stands 
nearer to Paul in Acts xxii., we shall find a little 
more initiative allowed to Paul, a little less of the 
Twelve directing and “sending” him to his work, 
a little more of his receiving a commission directly 
from Christ himself, and that, too, a commission 
specifically to the Gentiles, in spite of the fact 
that by putting this and that together the reader 
may infer that the Cornelius incident is still in 
the future. Acts xxii. knows of no actual work 
of Paul in Jerusalem. Before he has a chance 
to begin it, he has a trance, as he is praying in 
the temple, in which Jesus appears and tells him 
to go to the Gentiles. Paul is quite surprised to 
be told that the Jews will not listen to him, so 
that clearly he knows nothing of the plot against 
his life of ix. 29. To all appearance, this is the 
first suggestion that has come to him of an apostle- 
ship to the Gentiles, in spite of ix. 15. For surely 
we are not intended to understand that Paul per- 
sisted in keeping to his own plan in spite of the 
vision; but the alternative is to recognize that 
the two accounts are not in accord. Chapter xxii. 


92 THE STORY OF ST. PAUL 


represents a partial adjustment of chapter xxvi. to 
the Jewish-Christian narrative of chapter ix. Paul 
is still baptized by Ananias and does take his 
original commission from him. On the other hand, 
he does not work in Jerusalem under direction of 
the Apostles. He receives a new commission from 
Jesus himself, which diverts him from his intended 
course of evangelistic work. 

In reality, as we have seen, Paul was not intro- 
duced to the Twelve at all. He purposely kept out 
of their way and worked independently. Once 
during his fifteen years of missionary activity ex- 
tending from Damascus to Tarsus, and covering 
the two great provinces of Syria and Cilicia, he 
made a furtive visit of two weeks to Peter in 
Jerusalem; but he had the best of reasons for 
making it strictly incognito. His life was far from 
safe in Jerusalem, and while he had less to fear at 
this time than later from “false brethren,” not 
one of the Christian community saw him but Peter 
and James. ' 

With all Paul’s zeal and activity in Syria and 
Cilicia, it was the day of small things. Had he 
been able to work upon the scale of later times, the 
churches of Christ in Judea would have taken the 
alarm much sooner than they did. Tradition, doubt- 
less, would also have had something more to tell 
of that great period of which Paul gives us a 


THE PROPAGATION OF THE GOSPEL 93 


glimpse in 2 Cor. xi. 23-27. That which made a 
tremendous change both in the scale of Paul’s mis- 
sion work and, partly as a consequence, in the rela- 
tion of it to the Jerusalem disciples, was the coming 
of Barnabas to Antioch. 

Antioch, as we have seen, had a Christian com- 
munity of mixed type. It was not of Paul’s found- 
ing, and in accordance with the rule which he tells 
us in Rom. xv. 20 he had always followed, for which 
indeed he had more than one excellent reason, he 
did not at first identify himself with it. His rule 
was to “ preach where Christ had not so much as 
been named, and not to build on another man’s 
foundation.” Here, as later at Ephesus and at 
Rome, Paul felt a reluctance to enter, though the 
church had certainly liberal tendencies, and the city 
was the great metropolis of his mission field. 

The first suspicions at Jerusalem that the bars 
were being let down too easily to the Gentile world 
were not provoked by the smaller cities, where 
Paul was laboring. For Paul’s practice was to be 
‘“‘to them that are under the Law as under the Law, 
and to them that are without the Law as without it,” 
and he was doubtless at this time quite as solicitous 
as later to ‘“‘ give no offense either to Jews or Gen- 
tiles, or to the Church of God.” Antioch gave them 
rise, and the Jerusalem authorities, it must be con- 
fessed, showed the greatest wisdom and tolerance 


94 THE STORY OF ST. PAUL ' 


in the type of man whom they selected to send 
thither as their representative. Himself, like Paul, 
a Hellenist, Barnabas was both broad-minded and 
devoutly consecrated. He was a Levite, a brother of 
that Mary, mother of John Mark, in whose house 
the Church had been wont to meet, in all probability 
from the very night when Jesus had gone forth 
from it to his betrayal, when the boy Mark, roused 
from his bed by the approach of the traitor’s posse, 
had fled, covered only with the bed-linen, to give 
the alarm in Gethsemane. Barnabas himself had 
been the owner of a field near Jerusalem, which he 
sold to cast the proceeds into the common purse. 
His devotion accordingly could not be questioned 
in Jerusalem; but he was also of Greek birth, “a 
good man and full of the Holy Ghost and faith.” 
Consequently, “‘ when he came to Antioch and had 
seen the grace of God,” he made no scruples of 
approving the work. Heartily he cast in his lot 
with them, “and much people were added to the 
Lord,” of course by no means all Jews. 

By far the most important step which Barnabas 
took is related in the following verse: “ He went 
forth to Tarsus to seek for Saul, and when he had 
found him, he brought him to Antioch.” 4 


1 In the text of Acts followed by the English versions this pas- 
sage is brought into agreement with the statements of Acts ix. 
30, that Paul had been ‘‘ sent to Tarsus” by “the brethren ; but 


THE PROPAGATION OF THE GOSPEL 95 


Nothing is told us of the first year of this mo- 
mentous partnership save a single incident; but 
that one is significant, and, moreover, it enables us 
to fix the date with accuracy. It was after the sud- 
den death of Herod Agrippa in the summer of 44. 
Poor Judea, after four years’ rejoicing under an 
independent sovereign who on his mother’s side was 
of the ancient Maccabzan stock, a Pharisee of the 
most ‘“‘ Pharisaic”” type, was reduced to the lowest 
scale of political humiliation by incorporation into 
the Roman province of Syria. The resistance of 
Theudas was quenched in blood by Cuspius Fadus, 
the new procurator, sent to take charge in 45. 
Then, famine supervening upon war, came the ter- 
rible drought which reached its culmination in the 
procuratorship of Tiberius Alexander, successor to 
Fadus, a. p. 46-48. It was specially remembered 
at Jerusalem for the benefactions of Queen Helena 
of Adiabene, a proselyte, who relieved the distress 
by sending a shipload of provisions from Cyprus. 
It was characteristic of men like Barnabas and 
Paul, that when certain prophets came down to 
Antioch from Jerusalem and made known the im- 
an important variant gives a reading in better agreement with the 
real historical conditions. “ And when he [Barnabas] heard that 
Saul was in Tarsus he went forth to seek him, and when he had 
come across him he entreated him to come to Antioch.” The real 


independence of Paul’s work here still shines through; but com- 
pare the common text. 


96 THE STORY OF ST. PAUL 


pending distress,!— for when the fall rains fail, 
everybody in Palestine knows it means famine for 
the ensuing summer, — Paul and Barnabas should 
move the church to minister in carnal things to the 
church whence they had received their spiritual 
things. Luke is certainly mistaken again at this 
point. Either it was not Paul and Barnabas who 
administered, as he says, the relief in Jerusalem ; 
for Paul explicitly says he did not go to Jerusalem 
between the visit to get acquainted with Peter and 
that of the great conference as to circumcision ; or 
else the famine relief visit is the same as that of 
the conference, Luke being misled by the various 
interests of the sources he followed into relating 
them as two separate occasions. In the latter case 
we should probably adopt the view of Pfleiderer, 
very recently, but very positively put forth, that its 
date was before, not after, the so-called First Mis- 
sionary Journey. At all events, we may be sure 
that the year 46 or 47 was marked by this great 
act of fellowship between the centre of Gentile and 
the centre of Jewish Christianity “in the matter of 


1 The statement of Luke that the famine extended “ over the 
whole world ”’ indicates, in conjunction with the very loose dating 
“in the days of Claudius,” how little knowledge he has of the 
facts. He is confounding the well-known-famine in Judza with 
the assiduae sterilitates in various parts of the world, for which the 
reign of Claudius was remembered because they led to the erection 
of the vast jetties and piers at Ostia. 


THE PROPAGATION OF THE GOSPEL 97 


giving and receiving.” In Acts it is made to take 
the place of the far more important one of Rom. xv. 
25-28. 

It was not till a year later that an epoch-making 
enterprise was undertaken by the two kindred spirits 
who now appear as leaders among the “ prophets 
and teachers ”’ of the church in Antioch. For Bar- 
nabas heads the list of Acts xiii. 1; Paul, perhaps 
because a new-comer, is mentioned last. Still, we 
can hardly imagine his influence to have been sub- 
ordinate in the present plan; for the enterprise 
was nothing less than the organization of the first 
Christian foreign mission standing on a definite 
base. Indeed, if Pfleiderer’s view be adopted, Paul 
had paved the way for it first by a distinct under- 
standing with the “ pillar-apostles”’ in Jerusalem 
that “he and Barnabas should go unto the Gen- 
tiles.” At any rate, the church in Antioch, as such, 
formally commissioned two dzécroAo to carry the 
Gospel into Gentile territory. Barnabas and Saul 
were to go forth under formal sanction of the 
church, to do this work, and to report home to 
Antioch. “So then, when they had fasted and 
prayed and laid their hands on them, they sent 
them away.” The missionaries set sail for Cyprus, 
the native province of Barnabas, “ being sent forth,” 
as Luke is careful to add, “ by the Holy Ghost ;” 
which means that the Antioch prophets and teachers 


98 THE STORY OF ST. PAUL 


had signified in inspired utterance that the enter- 
prise was the work of God. 

Time forbids me to dwell upon a story that is 
familiar. In Acts xiii. and xiv. we have a full re- 
port of the great undertaking, which in one sense 
of the term well deserves its title of the “ First Mis- 
sionary Journey.” For the sudden expansion of the 
hitherto unaccountably meagre and _ ill-informed 
narrative of Acts is plainly connected with the 
central theme of the book now treated in chapter xv., 
the decision of “the Apostles and Elders” in Jeru- 
salem on the question of the terms of admission. 
Luke has reached the point at last where his ideas 
of propriety permit him to tell about the conversion 
of Gentiles. One of the principal reasons, indeed, 
for identifying the Galatian churches, so markedly 
involved in the great battle that now broke out 
between Paul and the conservatives of Jerusalem, 
with those of Derbe and Lystra, Ieonium and 
Antioch in Pisidia, founded on this journey, is 
that the, circumstances of their origin are related 
in Acts xiii._xiv. so fully, and in such immediate 
relation to the story of the controversy in Acts xv. ; 
whereas if these are not the principal representa- 
tives of “ the churches of Galatia,” Luke has passed 
by entirely the founding of this historically most 
important of all the great Pauline provincial 
churches, to dwell at great length on certain others 


THE PROPAGATION OF THE GOSPEL 99 


which had comparatively little to do with the great 
struggle. Besides, the indications of the Epistle, 
as well, are such as point to this same journey. 
True, Luke speaks of Derbe and Lystra as cities 
of Lycaonia, and of Antioch as “in Pisidia,” but 
all had been for seventy-five years cities of the 
Roman province of Galatia when Paul wrote; and 
Paul’s practice differs from Luke’s in that he in- 
variably uses the Roman geographical divisions. 
Pisidia and Lycaonia had no existence on the Roman 
map. By what common term, forsooth, could Paul 
address these many churches, except, “Galatians”?! 
Is he to say, “O ye Pisidians, Phrygians, and Ly- 
caonians, why are ye so foolish?” Is it probable 
that an attack of debilitating illness? suggested to 
him a foot-journey over the sparsely peopled plains 
of North Galatia, among a population where the 
very language would be unintelligible to him save 
in the few large cities ? You will find great names, 
from Lightfoot to Holtzmann, Schmiedel and 
Schirer with arguments far too elaborate for con- 
sideration here, in favor of the so-called North- 
Galatian theory. This theory demands a journey 
to Pessinus, Ancyra, and Tavium of which Acts 
knows nothing, but for which a crevice is pried 
open in Acts xvi. 6. For my own part, I must hold 
to the view of Renan, Hausrath, and Pfleiderer, 
1 Gal. iii. 1. 2 Gal. iv. 18. 


100 THE STORY OF ST. PAUL 


recently reinforced by Ramsay and the weightier 
names of English scholarship, which regards our 
Epistle to the Galatians as addressed in the first 
instance to Derbe and Lystra, Iconium and Antioch 
in Pisidia, with such other churches of this region 
of “ Phrygian Galatia” and “ Galatian Phrygia” 
as had subsequently received the Gospel.} v 
I must again refer to the story of Acts xiii.—xiv. 
for the trials and successes of the little party. To 
repeat the story of the voyage from Seleucia, port 
of Antioch, to Cyprus, of the preaching “in the 
synagogues of the Jews’ throughout the island, 
from Salamis to Paphos, where Sergius Paulus the 
proconsul becomes the first Gentile convert, of the 
plunging still deeper into Gentile territory, crossing 
from Paphos to Perga on the south coast of Asia 
Minor and striking up into the interior (as Ramsay 
thinks because of malarial fever contracted by Paul 
on the miasmatic coast, and referred to in Gal. iv. 
13 as the occasion of his visit) of the great results 
among the Gentiles at Antioch in Pisidia, to tell of 
the riot in Iconium, the healing of a paralytic in 
Lystra, followed first by attempted deification then 
by stoning, of the return through Pisidia, Pam- 
phylia, and Attalia, and so by sea to Antioch, would 
be to repeat a familiar story already retold with 


Zahn has adopted the South Galatian theory with this amend- 
ment, in his Hinleitung, 1897. 


THE PROPAGATION OF THE GOSPEL 101 


new significance in the interesting reports of Ram- 
say's exploration and research. 

We must look at the enterprise from the point 
of view of the movers; and thus seen it is apparent 
that there were two partners in the undertaking, of 
whom Barnabas and those whom he represented 
furnished the capital and authority, and Paul the 
experience. Mark, nephew of the senior partner, was 
the “Company.” Partnerships of this sort are said 
to dissolve frequently with the capitalist having the 
experience and the other man the capital. This 
partnership too was soon dissolved. In the Second 
Missionary Journey, if Jerusalem or Antioch are 
represented, it is in a minor capacity. Meantime it 
is no discredit to Paul that when they started out, 
it was “ Barnabas and Saul ;” when they left Cyprus 
after converting Sergius Paulus, it was “ Paul and 
his company;” and when they returned from Galatia 
and forever after (except in the letter of commen- 
dation which “the Apostles and elder brethren” 
in Jerusalem are graciously pleased to bestow‘), 
it is “ Paul and Barnabas.” 

It is not strange that a comparatively full flood 

1 Tt argues a lack of the sense of congruity when those familiar 
with Paul’s feeling toward men who required of him credentials, 
and to show “ letters of commendation, as do some,” accept with- 
out question the statement of Acts xvi. 4, that Paul went about 


his own previously founded churches of Galatia delivering this 
document. 


102 THE STORY OF ST. PAUL 


of light begins at this point in Acts to be thrown 
upon the career of Paul. Doubtless when the story 
was written, traditions, if not actual records, could 
be had at Jerusalem! and Antioch of its general 
results. There are even scholars who maintain, on 
the basis of a variant reading in Acts xi. 28, “ And 
there was great joy; and as we were assembled,” 
that the diary of Paul’s unknown companion is al- 
ready brought into use even here. In reality, the 
reading only shows that the tradition of the Antio- 
chian origin of Luke, which itself has very inse- 
cure foundation,? was current at the time when the 
scribe who originated this reading copied his manu- 
seript. The account of Acts xiii._xiv. has slight 
resemblance to the diary. It is full, but not free 
from legend. The story of Elymas the sorcerer dis- 
plays but one of many variant forms of an ancient 
theme ;* in its present form, it cannot be strictly 


1 On the assumption that Acts xiii—xiv. belong chronologically 
after Acts xv., the letter of commendation of xy. 24-27 correspond- 
ing to the formal agreement of Gal. ii. 9, we should expect tradi- 
tions, if not records, in Jerusalem also of this journey ; ef. Acts 
xiii. 13. 

2 Tt has been traced by some scholars to the mere resemblance 
of the name to Lucius of Cyrene, one of the Antiochian leaders. 

3 The duel of signs between the true and the false prophet in 
presence of some heathen potentate is as old as the story of Moses 
and Aaron confuting the Egyptian magicians before Pharaoh. Its 
favorite form in early Christian romance is the dispute between 
Simon Peter and Simon Magus before Nero, Simon Magus in the 


THE PROPAGATION OF THE GOSPEL 103 


historical. The speech placed in Paul’s mouth at 
Pisidian Antioch cannot be more than the historian’s 
attempt to tell what Paul might have said; for as 
a whole it simply rehearses the speech of Peter at 
Pentecost, with a few variations, some of which re- 
mind us of the speech,of Stephen. At all events, it 
is quite un-Pauline, and contains not one trait of his 
characteristic gospel, least of all in xiii. 39.1 Verses 
27-87, on the other hand, give the same arguments, 
based on the same scripture proof-texts already 
employed by Peter. The speech in Lystra also, Acts 
xiv. 14-17, is scarcely more than an abstract of the 


literature of the rabidly anti-Pauline sects actually being deline- 
ated in traits unmistakably intended to suggest the Apostle Paul. 
In apocalyptic literature Enoch and Elias, or, as in Rey. xi. 3-13, 
Moses and Elias, are withstood by the false prophet “as Jannes 
and Jambres withstood Moses,’’ until he is overcome by miraculous 
power. It has even been plausibly suggested that the temporarily 
inflicted blindness of Elymas the sorcerer, who called himself Bar- 
Jesus, and who when the mist and darkness fell upon him went 
about ‘‘ seeking some to lead him by the hand” (xe1paydéyous), is 
but an inverted echo of Saul himself, depicted in some caricature 
of Acts ix. 3-9, like that of the Clementine romances, as smitten 
with his temporary blindness because he was “ full of all guile 
and all villany, a son of the Devil, an enemy of all righteousness, 
who ceased not to pervert the right ways of the Lord.” 

1 The language of xiii. 39 is claimed as Pauline because of the 
single word ‘‘ justify.” The doctrine is exactly that which Paul 
fundamentally repudiates, and which in Gal. ii. 15-21 he demon- 
strates against Peter to be untenable, namely, that a man may 
rest upon the works of the law for his general justification, and 
tely on the death of Christ to make up deficiencies. 


104 THE STORY OF ST. PAUL 


sermon on Mars Hill. I am afraid we must even 
make some further discount from Luke’s narrative 
in its representation of the scrupulous care taken 
by the missionaries always to present the Gospel first 
to the Jews, and not until these have obstinately 
put it from them to turn solemnly to the Gentiles. 
As this same stereotyped procedure is gone through 
with on every single occasion, even in Rome, where 
there was before Paul’s arrival a large and flourish- 
ing Christian community, a general review of Acts 
compels us to regard it as belonging largely to the 
pragmatism of the historian, who is profoundly in- 
terested to show that the Christians are the true 
heirs of the promise; while the obstinate and stiff- 
necked Jews, having rejected and slain the Mes- 
siah, bring thus to fulfillment the so often quoted 
plaint of Isaiah against the willfully unbelieving. 
There is no need to doubt that the missionaries 
habitually sought the synagogue as the fulerum of 
their work in every place; but they were certainly 
not engaged in a search for “ the lost sheep of the 
hoyse of Israel” as their main object, and to im- 
agine Paul, already for some fifteen years zealously 
fulfilling his calling of God to preach the Gospel to 
the Gentiles, obliged now in every city to wait until 
the Jews have definitively rejected it before he feels 
justified in “turning to the Gentiles,” is to make 
1 See Is. vi. 9-10 as quoted e. g. in Acts xxyiii. 25-28. 


THE PROPAGATION OF THE GOSPEL 105 


him constantly repeat a solemn farce. The whole ex- 
pedition was a “ turning to the Gentiles,” or rather 
a raising to tenfold greater efficiency of a work 
among the Gentiles to which Paul had given him- 
self heart and soul some fifteen years before, and 
for which he had now obtained the support of the 
church in Antioch, if not that of Jerusalem as well. 
These are pretty serious exceptions to take to the 
aceuracy of Luke’s story of the First Missionary 
Journey ; and yet, in spite of all, the light it sheds 
isinvaluable. It shows us the Syrian church, by this 
great enterprise of Barnabas and Paul, giving prac- 
tical realization to the dream of the great Apostle 
of the Gentiles. Antioch, where those of the new 
faith “‘ were first called Christians,” had become the 
cradle of a new world-religion. That is the signifi- 
cance of the First Missionary Journey. 

As might have been expected, when the mis- 
sionaries reported on their return a Roman pro- 
consul converted, two entire new Gentile provinces 
added to the Lord, whole churches entirely made 
up of Gentile members, “ rehearsed,” in short, “all 
things that God had done with them and how he had 
opened a door of faith unto the Gentiles,” trouble 
began. One member of the expedition, in fact, had 


1 This would be true even on Pfleiderer’s order, placing the 
Jerusalem conference before the First Missionary Journey. For 
the “ false brethren privily brought in to spy out our liberty” 


106 THE STORY OF ST. A 


been beforehand with them, and had gotten back 
to Jerusalem, with his own report, doubtless not 
untinged by the scruples which had driven him to 
desert. John Mark had turned back after the party 
reached Pamphylia, and “ went not with them to 
the work.” Trouble in plenty was brewing, both in 
Antioch and Jerusalem; but the history of the 
great conflict that now broke out demands a lecture 
to itself. 


(Gal. ii. 4) were unable at Jerusalem to disturb seriously the har- 
mony of Paul’s relations with the “ pillars.” 


LECTURE IV 


THE UNDERSTANDING IN JERUSALEM AND 
MISUNDERSTANDING AT ANTIOCH 


You will have foreseen during the course of the 
preceding lectures that a rupture in the Church 
was sooner or later inevitable, and that the line of 
cleavage must be the prerogative of Israel. The 
broader, more radical views of Stephen and the 
Hellenists were no doubt instrumental in bringing 
the Pharisees, under the leadership of the master- 
ful logician Saul, to see that the Law and the 
Temple were both threatened by the new sect, the 
former as the sole means of justification in the sight 
of God, the latter as the sole avenue of approach to 
God; but when the arch-persecutor deserted to the 
other side, active opposition ceased. Some of Ste- 
phen’s fellow Hellenists carried these broader ideas 
into the surrounding countries, Samaria, Philistia, 
as far north as Antioch; but at Jerusalem things 
quieted down. The radical element had perished 
with Stephen, or been driven off. Those who 
remained of the more conservative type were not - 
conscious of holding any views inimical to Law or 


108 THE STORY OF ST. PAUL 


Temple, and were left unmolested.1 These included, 
Luke tells us, the whole body of the Apostles. On 
one interpretation of Paul’s words,? even the arch- 
persecutor himself, when on his way to seize and 
punish the Christians in Damascus, was aware all 
the time that the Apostles were in Jerusalem within 
easy reach ; but it is perhaps equally reasonable to 
suppose that the implied knowledge was obtained 
after his conversion from fellow believers. 

Saul, however, when he had made his sudden 
change to the opposite pole of conviction, was care- 
ful to preach his doctrines of the abolition of the 
Law and superseding of the Temple away from 
Jerusalem. Not because he feared collision with 
the Apostles. On the contrary, he was confident 
of ultimately gaining their fundamental sympathy. 
He believed he could prove to them, when the time 
came, that his gospel was indeed “ the same faith ” 
he had once persecuted. It was another class that 
Paul dreaded, one which, since the scattering of 
the followers of Stephen, had grown stronger and 
stronger in the church, until, at Paul’s last visit, 
James himself seems to feel that they are not to be 

1 Acts xxi. 20-24. 2 Gal. i. 17. 

3 This hope was fully realized at the conference. We cannot 
too strongly insist that both informants, Paul and “ Luke,” 
emphatically assert this fact. The disagreement with Peter and 


“ certain from James ” broke out subsequently, not at Jerusalem, 
but at Antioch. 


IN JERUSALEM AND AT ANTIOCH 109 


dictated to even by him. “Thou seest, brother, 
how many myriads there are of the Jews that 
believe, and they are all [such was James’ esti- 
mate of the relative strength of old and new school 
in Jerusalem]— ail zealots for the Law.”1 With 
all the friendship and confidence James himself and 
the Apostles seem to have still continued to repose 
in Paul,? James was further obliged to confess that 
these Jerusalem Christians did not believe in Paul, 
but looked on him as an enemy of that Law of which 
they themselves were so zealous. They regarded 
him as one who goes to the Jews that are among 
the Gentiles, “ teaching them to forsake Moses, and 
not to circumcise their children.” 

That was in A. D. 55, some seven years after 
the period with which we are dealing; but in the 
mean time the Jerusalem church had not changed its 
attitude as to the necessity of Jews — Christians or 
not — obeying the Law of Moses. It was some of 
the more aggressive men of this old-school type who, 
as Luke tells us, joining the statement to his ac- 
count of the missionary report of Paul and Barna- 
bas, “ came down to Antioch from Judea and taught 
the brethren, saying, ‘ Except ye be circumcised 
after the custom of Moses, ye cannot be saved.’” 3 


1 Acts xxi. 20. 2 Thid. verse 24. 
3 On Pfleiderer’s view, the controversy arose earlier. The author 
who transforms the Antioch church itself from asemi-Gentile foun- 


110 THE STORY OF ST. PAUL 


It does not appear from the references of either 
Luke or Paul that the new-comers were authorized 
by anybody to attempt this tightening up of the 
orthodoxy of Antioch. The Apostles had shown 
their attitude by sending Barnabas some two or 
three years before. We know what position Barna- 
bas had taken. Peter had baptized Cornelius; but 
the new-comers in Antioch seem to have belonged 
to the class of the ultra-orthodox laity. Possibly 
they may have gone down with Agabus at the time 
of the famine. Upon the Jerusalem adherents of 
the same party Luke bestows the description, “ cer- 
tain of the sect of the Pharisees who believed.” 
Paul speaks his mind about them with less reserve. 
There even seems to be a contrast in his tone that 
should not be disregarded. So far as I can see, 
there is no ground for the contention that he 
applies in the Epistles the language of reproba- 
tion, or even of disrespect, to any single one of 
the Apostles at any time; nor to James. He does 
speak of “‘ those who were reputed to be somewhat 


dation into a church of converts from the “ Hellenists,” would logi- 
cally be compelled to defer it until the First Missionary Journey 
had introduced that Gentile element which gaye rise to the dis- 
sension; but among other clear traces of manipulation of the pas- 
sage xi. 19-30 is the indication of verse 22 that something more 
than the conversion of ‘‘ Jews” is in the air. The analogy of xi. 
1-3 suggests that this and not the First Missionary Journey was 
the real occasion of the Jerusalem Conference. 


IN JERUSALEM AND AT ANTIOCH 111 


—what they once were makes no matter to me. 
God accepteth no man’s person—they who were 
reputed to be ‘pillars, James and Cephas and 
John,” if that can be called disrespect. But this 
language is found in the very assertion of their 
hearty support of Paul. On the other hand, he 
certainly does speak with contempt of certain 
“super-extra apostles” (izepAiav axrocroho), whom he 
also calls “ ministers of Satan.” But only those 
who are ignorant of the broader use of the term 
dzdotoXos can imagine that he is here speaking of 
the Twelve. The Judzan interlopers in Antioch, on 
the contrary, Paul calls plumply “ false brethren ” 
and “spies.” He says they were brought in there 
by stealth; they “sneaked in” as spies to carry 
tales to Jerusalem about the liberty Christians 
were enjoying at Antioch. Unless I mistake the 
sense of Gal. ii. 4, he assures us that it was on their 
account that he took the uncircumcised Titus to 
Jerusalem, foreseeing a pitched battle over his per- 
son, and meaning to have a living witness of the 
outcome. 

Let us not anticipate. We need to realize how 
broad a distinction there was in Paul’s mind be- 
tween these “false brethren” and the Apostles. 
We also need to discriminate with the utmost 
pains between that occasion and subject whereon 
Paul found himself, to his unbounded relief, in 


112 THE STORY OF ST. PAUL 


complete accord with the older Apostles, and that 
subsequent occasion, and much more limited sub- 
ject, on which he felt obliged to take peremptory 
issue, not only with Peter, the very chief Apostle, 
but even with his beloved Barnabas. 

In our last lecture I felt obliged, in the interest - 
of our appreciation of Paul, to take decided excep- 
tion to the story in the form given it in Acts. 
To-day I shall have some further occasion to criti- 
cise Luke’s narrative, but first of all I must put 
myself on the side of both Luke and Paul against 
a very modern tradition that is pure misunder- 
standing even of Luke. 

Unless I greatly misconceive the facts, the aver- 
age reader of Acts xv. regards the four require- 
ments which “ the Apostles and elder brethren ” ! in 
Jerusalem undertake to impose upon the Gentiles as 
“ necessary ” (éravayxés), in the light of a compro- 
mise. Having conceded that it was impracticable 
to impose upon them the whole Mosaic law, they 
decided that no more than these four things, “ ab- 
stinence from things strangled and from blood, 
from things offered to idols and from fornication,” 
should be retained as obligatory. Accordingly, you 
will find the requirements referred to as “ the No- 


1 I employ the text as it stands. The expression is peculiar, 
and may be corrupted from “ The Apostles and Elders unto the 
brethren,” ete. 


IN JERUSALEM AND AT ANTIOCH 113 


achian precepts,’ with some dim idea that they 
correspond to the legislation of Gen. ix., in which 
man is permitted to eat flesh on condition of pre- 
serving the sanctity of the blood. Others inform 
us that the Jews at this period distinguished two . 
kinds of proselytes, those fully identified with Israel 
by the rite of circumcision and observance of the 
whole Mosaic law, called “ proselytes of righteous- 
ness,’ and partial converts, called “ proselytes of 
the gate.” Others still point to Lev. xvii.—xviii. as 
similar legislation imposed upon the ger or adopted 
Israelite. It is true that there was great difference 
of opinion as to how much should be required of 
proselytes, some rabbis being stricter, others alto- 
gether lax ;1 but of a division into two classes, bear- 
ing the distinctive titles Proselytes of the Gate and 
Proselytes of Righteousness, there is, I believe, no 
real evidence. Still less is there the faintest trace 
of evidence that either by custom or authority the 
Noachian precepts, plus those two requirements of 
the Jerusalem decrees which have nothing to do 
with the Noachian precepts, were substituted by 
anybody for the Mosaic law as a standard for prose- 
lytes. The whole character and object of the decrees 
is misunderstood, with injustice to Luke, and still 
more to Paul, if we imagine that either party in 
Jerusalem had any idea of compromise. The ques- 


1 See Josephus, Ant. xx. ii. 4. 


114 THE STORY OF ST. PAUL 


tion did not admit it. Either the Law in its en- 
tirety was obligatory on everybody, or none of it 
was obligatory on anybody. So, at least, said Paul. 
The Jewish party were divided ; the extreme legal- 
ists agreed with Paul that all must stand upon the 
same footing; only in their view, that footing for 
both parties, Jew and Gentile, was the Law in its 
entirety. The more liberal element at Jerusalem, 
including James and the Apostles, and apparently 
later Peter and Barnabas, thought it possible to 
maintain two standards. They did not agree with 
Paul, if they understood him,! that the Law was 
done away for Jews.? The Jew who believed was 
to continue, as before, a devout observer of the 
Law of Moses. This was the distinctive mark of 
God’s choice of Israel to know and be known of 
Him. This type of believer understood his Chris- 
tianity in the sense which in the speech in Lystra 


1 In Acts xxi. 24, the author (and James also, if correctly re- 
ported) misunderstands Paul. Paul did not “ walk orderly keep- 
ing the Law.” He kept it when he thought best, #. e., did not 
keep it. 

2 Tn the second century we find abundant proof of that division 
of the Law into ceremonial and moral requirements, the former 
temporary, the latter of perpetual obligation. This distinction, 
however, — natural as it appears to us, and more or less consist- 
ently adopted by the Church catholic from the second century 
down, — is wholly unknown to Paul. It is certainly of later de- 
velopment, although the germs of the distinction are traceable in 
parts of the New Testament. See below, p. 135, note. 


IN JERUSALEM AND AT ANTIOCH 115 


is so incongruously placed in the mouth of Paul. 
His faith in Christ was supplementary; by it he 
would “ be justified from all things from which he 
could not be justified by the Law of Moses.” The 
Gentile, having no justification at all by the Law 
of Moses, would depend exclusively upon his faith 
in Christ. Such is the point of view of “ they of 
Cephas” in Corinth. Such is the view of the Epis- 
tle of James. Such is the view of Acts, at least in 
its principal source. To imagine that anybody, on 
either side, supposed that the matter could be 
compromised by drawing a line through the Law 
of Moses and saying to the Gentiles, ‘ There, these 
four things are necessary; we will dispense you 
from the rest,” is utterly to misconceive it. Who 
were these ‘“ Apostles and elder brethren,” that 
they could say to their Lord’s creditors, “ Here, 
take thy bill, sit down quickly and for four-score 
write fifty —for fifty write thirty”? If there is 
one point of perfect agreement between the Epistle 
to the Galatians and the Epistle of James, it is 
that if a man would be justified by the Law, “ he 
is a debtor to do the whole Law,” ! and cannot 
pick and choose. ‘ For, whosoever shall keep the 
whole Law, and yet stumble at one point, is be- 
come guilty of all.” 2 We may set it down, then, 
as certain, no matter how much we may be told 


1 Gal. v. 3; ef. iii. 10. 2 Jas. ii. 10, 11. 


116 THE STORY OF ST. PAUL 


about “‘ Noachian precepts” and “ proselytes of the 
gate,” that the idea of compromising on a part of 
the Law for Gentiles is pure nonsense. 

Moreover, it is wholly modern nonsense. Luke 
does not assert it any more than Paul does; and 
Paul is explicit and peremptory in his denial. Who- 
ever carefully reads Gal. ii. 1-10 alongside of Acts 
xv, 5-29 will find, indeed, important differences ; 
the differences are so great as to lead Professor Ram- 
say even to deny that the two accounts refer to the 
same occasion; but the differences are very far 
from outweighing the points of coincidence, and the 
most weighty of all, the alleged statement of Luke 


1 Professor Ramsay would have us suppose that this visit of 
Gal. ii. 1-10 is the famine-relief visit, and that the rupture be- 
tween Paul and Peter at Antioch (Gal. ii. 11-21) took place 
before it, both preceding the visit of Acts xv. The weakness of 
this theory lies in Professor Ramsay’s inability to transcend the 
old Tiibingen point of view, which falsely assumes that the con- 
flict in Antioch was over the old question whether circumcision 
and obedience to the Mosaic law should be required of the Gen- 
tiles; whereas Paul is explicit in stating that it was over the 
question of converted Jews ‘‘ eating with [converted] Gentiles.’ 
The very nature of the difficulty presupposes that the Gentiles 
in question have first been admitted to the brotherhood ‘‘ without 
the yoke of the law;” for it is the point of departure in Paul’s 
argument. Hence the fundamental question of principle involved 
in Gal. ii. 1-10 (Acts xv. 1-12) had already been settled at this time. 
In short, if the conference of Acts xv. is of later date than that 
of Gal. ii. 1-10, then Paul sacrificed the unconditional liberty of 
the Gentiles he had once won for a conditional liberty subsequently 
allowed. 


IN JERUSALEM AND AT ANTIOCH 117 


that “the Apostles and elder brethren” refused to 
acknowledge the entire freedom of the Gentiles 
from the yoke of the Law, is pure modern fiction. 
Peter’s speech explicitly takes the ground of Paul. 
It even goes so far in this direction as to arouse 
very serious question regarding the accuracy of the 
report ; but at any rate, Peter shows not the slight- 
est idea of dividing. He pleads for the abolition — 
for Gentiles — of the whole yoke of the Law. And 
James agrees to it. He does not move to amend by 
reserving a part. He introduces a separate motion 
on a new subject not supposed to conflict with the 
original motion. Whether it did or not, we shall 
see presently. What we note now is that Luke 
agrees with Paul, that the Apostles “ added nothing 
to his gospel,’ but bade him God-speed in his 
preaching to the Gentiles of salvation ‘ through 
the grace of the Lord Jesus” without the yoke of 
the Law. 

The minor points of difference we may consider 
very briefly. (a) Luke calls this Paul’s third 
visit to Jerusalem. That, we have seen, is simply 
an error.! Paul did not carry the alms of the Anti- 


1 Many critics maintain, however, that something of intention 
goes along with the error. As Acts now reads, the great occasion 
of Paul’s fateful journey to Jerusalem carrying as alms the gifts 
of all the churches of the Gentiles is suppressed (save for the allu- 
sion in Paul’s speech, Acts xxvi.). This suppression can hardly be 
unrelated to the slander of the Simon-Magus-Paul legend that 


118 THE STORY OF ST. PAUL 


och church to Jerusalem in 46-47 ; unless, indeed, 
we identify the visit of Acts xy. with this, placing 
it before the First Missionary Journey. 

(b) Paul says he went up “ by revelation ;” Luke, 
by vote of the church. There is no conflict. It was 
the rule in the Church to consider and adopt by vote 
measures which were proposed under the claim of 
prophetic inspiration. Paul emphasizes the divine- 
ness of the suggestion. (It very likely was his own 
“‘ revelation.” ) Luke, with his characteristic eccle- 
siasticism, emphasizes the official sanction. Paul 
and Barnabas at Antioch “ had no small dissension 
and questioning ” with the self-appointed inquisitors 
from Judza. Paul, or Barnabas, or some other of 
the “prophets and teachers,” brought before the 
church as a suggestion of God’s own Spirit the re- 
ferring of the question to the Twelve. Of course 
it was a critical matter for Paul, but he had faith 
in God and in the ability of men like Peter, who 
had “companied with the Lord J esus,” to appreci- 
ate his point of view. He believed he could bring 
them to see that his Gentile gospel was really in- 
volved in their own. His decision was a triumph 
of faith — faith in God, faith in man. To Paul, 


characteristically, it was a “revelation;” and 


represented Paul as seeking to bribe the Apostles. Perhaps the 
representation of Paul and Barnabas bringing alms from Antioch 
before the outbreak of the controversy may be due partly to a 
purpose of compensation for suppression of the later instance. 


¢ 


IN JERUSALEM AND AT ANTIOCH § 119 


“the brethren appointed that Paul and Barnabas 
and certain other of them should go up to Jeru- 
salem.” 

(c) “ That certain other of them” of Luke does 
not seem a grave point of difference from Paul’s 
“and I took Titus along.” In reality, it is a mat- 
ter of decided significance that in the whole Book 
of Acts this man, Titus, probably the first and 
most trusted of all Paul’s Gentile helpers, certainly 
the man whose case became the pivot of the whole 
controversy, should never be mentioned. It is a 
fact which goes along with that of the omission of 
all mention of the rupture between Paul and Peter 
at Antioch; along with the explanation of Paul’s 
separation from Barnabas by the trivial difference 
of his dissatisfaction with Mark; along with the 
silence regarding the real occasion for Paul’s risk- 
ing his life to go at all costs to Jerusalem ; along 
with the representation of Peter as eating with the 
Gentiles and obtaining the sanction of the Church for 
it way back in the Cornelius episode ; along with his 
maintaining at the Jerusalem council that the yoke 
of the Law was not only too heavy for the Gentiles, 
but for Jews also. Professor Chase puts it mildly 
when he says:! “The history was written long 
after the controversy had passed away. To drag out 
again into the daylight all the mistakes and heart- 

1 Credibility of Acts, p. 92. 


120 THE STORY OF ST. PAUL 


burnings of the time, if indeed St. Luke knew them, 
would have been a useless outrage; and he was 
not guilty of it. . . . The reticence of Acts is not 
an argument against its veracity. It is an example 
to be followed. The tomb of dead controversies ought 
to be an inviolable resting-place.” Professor Chase 
is quite right in his sympathy for Luke’s feeling. 
It would be indeed inconceivable that one writing 
when Luke did, and for the purpose simply of con- 
firming the faith of a Christian convert in the 
divine establishment of Christianity, should bring 
out all the family skeletons. The reticence of Acts 
does not “argue inveracity.” It simply shows that 
the author really does tell his story as in accordance 
with his professed purpose we ought to expect, in- 
stead of treating his book as if he were a-Tacitus 
or a Mommsen. It shows what kind of a book Acts 
is, and Luke had a perfect right to construct that 
kind of a book. The “reticence” is not made by 
any decent critic the basis for any blame of Luke ; 
we blame those who insist on putting him in a false 
light. It must be admitted to show that there are 
a number of things which Luke not only does not 
tell, but purposely avoids telling. Yet Paul found 
it necessary to tell these things; and we also may 
rightly assume to investigate for the same reason, 
namely, that we wish to understand Paul. 

What, then, of the “reticence” of Acts, and the 


IN JERUSALEM AND AT ANTIOCH 121 


reluctant frankness of Paul, in regard to Titus? 
To take Titus to Jerusalem was throwing down the 
gauntlet to the “false brethren.” Paul knew that. 
It is probably the thing that he refers to in the 
broken sentence of Gal. ii. 4, ‘« Z¢ was because of the 
false brethren who came in to spy out our liberty.” 
He means, “I would not have offered what some 
might deem a wanton affront to the Apostles and 
Elders, —I would not have brought this apple of 
discord into the case, if I had not known that the 
crisis was unavoidable and fundamental.” ! 

(d) In line with this silence as to Titus is 
Luke’s reticence about any difference of opinion 
between Paul and the Pillars, his silence about any 
private interview in which pressure was brought to 
bear upon Paul to induce him to give way; but 
Paul tells us of it, and adds that he would not yield 
for so much as one hour, because he felt it would 
compromise the liberty of the Gentiles he had come 
there to champion. He who was all things to all 
men, as under the Law to them that are under the 
Law, so considerate of the scruples of others that 
he would agree to eat no meat while the world 

1 On the horror with which this bringing an uncircumcised 
Gentile into “the holy city”? would be viewed by “‘ the Pharisees 
that believed,” and its possible connection with the false charge 
which the author of Acts makes the occasion of the riot in the 


temple and arrest of Paul (Acts. xxi. 29), see Lucht, in Zeitschrift 
fiir wiss. Theologie, 1872. 


122 THE STORY OF ST. PAUL 


standeth, rather than give offense to the Church of 
God, or put a stumbling-block before the weakest, 
now stood like a rock. James, who afterwards ad-— 
vised him to conciliate Jewish-Christian feeling in 
Jerusalem by offering the sacrifices in the temple 
for the men who had Nazirite vows (advice which 
Paul followed at the cost of his liberty and ultimately 
of his life), — James, we may be sure, entreated him 
to make some concession. In vain, Paul had 
brought Titus there on purpose to settle the mat- 
ter once for all, and there was but one way to 

settle it. They could not deny that the grace of 
God had been poured out in all the tokens of the 
Spirit — prophecy, tongues, miracles —on these 
Gentiles, to whom Paul had offered no other way 
of salvation than “the grace of the Lord Jesus,” 
utterly regardless of the works of the Law. Like 
honest, true men, as they were, they not only 
admitted it, not only acknowledged that Paul’s 
calling to the Gentiles was as truly divine as Peter’s 
and their own, and his gospel of justification by 
faith in Jesus ample without a single word of 
addition or qualification, they also gave him a cor- 
dial, full, sincere weleome as an Apostle of Jesus 
Christ, on full equality with themselves. It was in- 
deed a momentous step. It meant more for the his- 
tory of Christianity than can easily be appreciated; 
but Paul’s faith in God and in the Pillar Apostles 


IN JERUSALEM AND AT ANTIOCH 123 


was vindicated. We may well believe that Peter’s 
part was no small one, as Luke suggests. Even if 
‘the case of Cornelius was not cited, — for Cornelius 
is possibly conceived as a proselyte before his con- 
version, — Paul’s cordial relations with Peter both 
before and for at least a short time after, as well as 
Peter’s own temperament, make it easy to see which 
side Peter must have inclined to. 

So Titus was not circumcised. Paul’s gospel 
without the Law was approved for Gentiles. Some 
concession, however, must be made if the Church was 
not to be rent to the foundations. It was along the 
lines of Paul’s original practice. The two classes, 
so far as possible, should be kept separate. Paul 
agreed on his part not to go as an iconoclast among 
the Jews, “teaching them to forsake Moses, and 
not to circumcise their children, nor obey the cus- 
toms.” ! The representatives of the mother church, 
on their part, agreed not to propagate Mosaism in 
Paul’s field.2 Mutual respect and equality ; both 
parties in the right, but careful to avoid collision; 
reciprocal non-interference: such was the basis of 


1 Acts xxi. 21. 

2 Of course the division had to be in the main geographical. It 
did not mean that Paul would pass by the synagogues which he 
found in Gentile territory, nor Peter avoid preaching salvation by 
faith plus works of the Law to Gentiles in his territory. The 
division was general, and, so far as the principals were concerned, 
it was faithfully observed during all the years of controversy. 


124 THE STORY OF ST. PAUL 


agreement, and it seemed a very happy and com- 
plete one. Paul and Barnabas parted from the 
Jerusalem Pillars with a hearty grasp of the hand 
(not a mere conventional greeting, but the solemn 
pledge of unity), and the momentous interview was 
over. Against Acts xv. 20-28 (29) we can assert 
positively that there was nothing more of an official 
character. The very exception which Paul makes 
is evidence both of the complete unity of feel- 
ing, and of the absence of the alleged “ decrees.” 
One does not ask gifts of money from those with 
whom relations are strained. Paul states both the 
official and the unofficial action; his assertion is 
positive and exclusive that the Pillars added no- 
thing whatever (officially) to their indorsement of 
his gospel, only (unofficially) “they would that we 
should remember the poor, which I had already 
made a matter of zealous concern.” We have in- 
deed seen that this was really the case. 

This is Paul’s representation. Luke, it must be 
admitted, goes beyond the limits of mere “reti- 
cence” in his representation of how the great dispute 
was settled. What shall we do with these further 
very decided variations : (e) The general conclave 
of the church, publicly assuming jurisdiction over 
Paul and the terms of his gospel for the Gentiles ; 
(f) the “decrees” and letter of commendation ; 

g) the delegation of Judas and Silas to Antioch ? 


IN JERUSALEM AND AT ANTIOCH 125 


Here I am afraid I must again insist that Paul is 
right and Luke wrong; that the latter is yielding 
to his constant tendency to regard the Apostles and 
Elders in Jerusalem as in control of all foreign mis- 
sions, not to say that speech-making before public 
tribunals is a favorite device of our historiographer. 
It is not that Gal. ii. 1-10 excludes a public gather- 
ing. I am rather disposed to think that it even 
throws a sort of side-glance! at the public reports 
of the spread of the Gospel by the missionaries, of 
which Acts makes so much. The trouble is that 
Luke plainly thinks (and represents) that the 
matter of Paul’s gospel of salvation for the Gentiles 
without the yoke of the Law was made a matter of 
public debate before “all the multitude” of the 
Jerusalem church. In fact, he has not a word about 
any other kind of gathering. Now we can say with 
complete certainty that Paul did not submit this 
question to any such promiscuous assembly, nor 
did he recognize any right whatever on their part 
to legislate as to what was or was not obligatory 
(éravayxés) for his free Gentile churches. Therefore 
he could not have quietly sat by and let them pass 
votes as to what they would permit or would not 


1 Lightfoot, Commentary on Gal., ad. loc., considers that kat’ 
iSfay 5é of ii. 2 contrasts the private meeting with the church at 
large. This is not impossible. We might even assume @ priori 
that there would be general gatherings to hear of the spread of 
the Gospel among the Gentiles. 


126 THE STORY OF ST. PAUL 


permit. All this is wholly excluded by Gal. ii. 1- 
10. Paul peremptorily excludes the alleged de- 
erees; but that is only the beginning. We can 
say with equal certainty from all the Epistles that 
Paul would have regarded himself as guilty of the 
most inexcusable folly, if, knowing as he did the 
temper of the “‘ many myriads of believers” in Jeru- 
salem, he had consented to go up there and lay be- 
fore them his free gospel, and ask them ‘ whether 
he were running or had run in vain.” Was Paul 
the man to want an indorsement of the revelation 
he had received from God by assembly vote? Did 
he imagine he would get an indorsement of such 
doctrines from the Jerusalem believers? Not for 
one instant. It is Paul’s statement, and only Paul’s, 
which the historical conditions make possible. It 
was a bold move to appeal directly over the heads 
of the Judaizers to those to whom they were point- 
ing as of doxotvres, “ those of repute,’ — the orvAo, 
“ Pillars,” —“ Apostles with whom Jesus abode 
and taught in the flesh a whole year;”! but 
we know on what grounds Paul dared to do it, and 
how his confidence was justified — probably to the 
equal amazement and discomfiture of his opponents. 
‘“‘ Privately, to them that were of repute,” Paul put 
the question: ‘Is this gospel of the redeeming love 
of God in Christ as the only reliance of every human 
1 Clem. Hom. iii. 18. 


IN JERUSALEM AND AT ANTIOCH 127 


creature, the real gospel of Jesus of Nazareth?” 
Privately, he challenged them to say from their 
experience with Jesus whether such faith was 
or was not of itself alone sufficient to save a man; 
even if he have no more works of the Law than 
the publican or the harlot or the repentant thief. 
And like honest, true followers of Jesus, James, 
Jesus’ brother, and Peter and John, his two most 
intimate disciples, “‘ when they perceived the grace 


of God that was given him,” acknowledged that so __ 


it was in fact. So Jesus had taught. 

That was the only authority Paul acknowledged. 
Where is the first paragraph or line of his Epistles 
that does not cry out against the idea that he ever 
sought the authorization of the Jerusalem church, 
or even of those that were Apostles before him, 
save as witnesses to the teaching of Jesus? Paul 
went to Jerusalem to get that witness. After that 
was given, the “ Apostles and Elders ” and “ whole 
multitude” of Christian “‘ zealots for the Law” 
might pass votes and resolutions till domesday for 
all it mattered to Paul and the Gentile churches. 
Luke’s “ reticence,” if you call it so, is all very 
well for Luke’s purposes; but it sheds darkness 
and not light on the Pauline Epistles. Let us have 
this brief word in favor of the “ credibility of Paul.” 

This does not mean that there is no foundation 
for Luke’s story of the conclave in Jerusalem and 


128 THE STORY OF ST. PAUL 


the decrees and delegation to Antioch. On the con- 
trary, there is the amplest evidence, both internal 
and external, that they did have such a meeting of 
the Jerusalem church; did enact certain “ decrees” 
which they deemed “ necessary” for the Gentiles of 
« Antioch, Syria, and Cilicia” (not Galatia or Cy- 
prus) ;/ did send them to Antioch by a delegation 
(all in an entirely friendly and egregiously mis- 
taken spirit) ; and did make no end of trouble by 
them. It only means that we must not forget that 
Luke abridges the story to the extent of dropping 
out what Professor Chase calls “the mistakes and 


heartburnings of the time;” 


and having dropped 
out the most vitally important incident of Paul’s 
whole missionary career, he naturally produces some 
confusion in his narrative. After such a proceed- 
ing, the severed ends do not come together without 
an adjustment which must be very skillful indeed 
to escape the eye of the critic,? aided as it is by 
the letters of Paul. 


1 Again we note the confirmation of Pfleiderer’s conjecture. 
The letter of Acts xv. 23-27, if we omit the addendum of verses 
28, 29, might well be genuine. It agrees perfectly with Gal. ii. 7-9; 
put if the controversy was really in regard to the converts of the 
First Missionary Journey through Cyprus and (Southern) Galatia, 
why is the letter addressed to “the brethren which are of the 
Gentiles in Antioch and Syria and Cilicia” (cf. Gal. i. 21), with no 
mention of Cyprus or Galatia ? 

2 One of the minor traces of readjustment attracted the eye of 
even the uncritical medizval scribe. Our revisers haye properly 


IN JERUSALEM AND AT ANTIOCH 129 


We must return to Paul’s account in Galatians 
to see what the happenings were which fill the gap 
in Luke’s story. At ii. 10 we left Paul and Bar- 
nabas returning from Jerusalem with Titus, their 
hearts overflowing with thankfulness, and the warm 
pressure of that hand-clasp still lingering grate- 
fully in their memories. In ii. 11 comes the visit 
of Peter to Antioch,! a worthy token of the era 
of good-feeling. For a time all went well. Peter 
adopted for his personal conduct the rule of Paul, 
“to them that were without the Law he became as 
without the Law.” The Law sat pretty lightly on 
the shoulders of a Galilean fisherman anyway, to say 
nothing of one who had often eaten with Jesus with 
unwashen hands in the houses of publicans and sin- 
ners. Peter knew well enough, of course, that in 
agreeing that the Gentiles were free from the Law, 
James and the rest in Jerusalem had no idea what- 
soever of absolving Jews from it. But when one is in 
Rome, one does as the Romans do. Here was Paul, 
the rabbi, eating whatever was set before him in 
Gentile houses, and “asking none of the questions 


thrown into the margin Acts xy. 34, a late correction of the state- 
ment of verse 33 that Silas returned to Jerusalem, verse 40 clearly 
showing that he remained. Had Luke not stricken out the second 
delegation from Jerusalem (Gal. ii. 12), there might have been no 
occasion for the scribe’s correction. 

1 Pfleiderer considers that this visit took place during the ab- 
sence of the missionaries, the collision occurring after their return. 


130 THE STORY OF ST. PAUL 


asked for conscience’ sake: ” “ Is this kosher! meat? 
Has the blood been all removed, or was it perhaps 
strangled? Has this piece of beef come from the 
market where they sell what was offered to the idol? 
Is my neighbor over there ceremonially clean, or is 
he perhaps tainted with the pollutions of idols?” 


1 The term is gradually becoming familiar even in our Ameri- 
can cities. We have learned of late that the orthodox Jew must 
have his own meat market, where everything has been bled, if not 
actually slaughtered, by the rabbi’s own hands. Otherwise he will 
“eat no meat while the world standeth.” We are obliged, how- 
ever, to go to ancient writers for an answer to the question why the 
matter is deemed so important. The eating of flesh is permitted 
in the Covenant with Noah (Gen. ix 1-7), on condition of serupu- 
lous regard for the sacredness of the blood, ‘‘ which is the life.” 
(The Priestly Document assumes that human food was previously 
grain and fruit, Gen. i. 29.) Later Jewish superstition explained, 
as we learn from Origen, that the eating of blood, or flesh imper- 
fectly drained of blood, might introduce strange life into the sys- 
tem. Similarly the prohibition of flesh torn of beasts was based 
on the belief that this is the food of the demons and vampires 
who inhabit the wilderness, with whom one thus becomes a 
“communicant ;” but it may still be given or sold to a Gentile, 
for the obvious reason that he is in communion with demons any- © 
way, to whom all his sacrifices are offered (1 Cor. x. 20). The 
same reason is distinctly applied by Paul (1 Cor. x. 14-22) to 
eating of cidwAd@ura, unless the spell be broken (so to speak) 
by the giving God the thanks (evxapiorhv), which transforms the 
act into an “eating unto the Lord” (Rom. xiy. 6). Analogy sug- 
gests that the prohibition of “ things strangled ”’ was based on the 
same conception, the unobstructed breathing forth of the breath 
being as essential to the dissipation of the sacred life as the pour- 
ing out of the blood. On Jewish carefulness against these pollu- 
tions, see the Book of Jubilees. 


IN JERUSALEM AND AT ANTIOCH 131 


Paul was careful to give no offense, he was scrupu- 
lously considerate of weak consciences in others, 
but so far as his own conscience was concerned, 
he gave God the thanks, and let the demons, those 
that are understood to secure entrance into a man 
who eats blood or exposes himself to the pollu- 
tions of idols, do their worst. To Paul there was 
nothing unclean of itself; neither if he ate not was 
he the better, nor if he ate was he the worse ; and 
Peter, nothing loath, followed Paul’s example, and 
‘‘ ate with the Gentiles.” 

That was the opportunity for the Pharisean be- 
lievers, against whom the tide had so long been 
running. O horror! The chief Apostle, under the 
spell of .Paul, throwing off the yoke of the Law! 
Peter, the Jew, living as do the Gentiles! The 
awful news was carried in whispered waves of scan- 
dal, — to Jerusalem, first of all, by the assiduous aid 
of the Pharisean believers. ‘“ Had the Apostles in- 
tended to dispense Jews from keeping the Law?” 
«« Was it known that Peter was now living without 
its restraint, in open imitation of the renegade 
Paul?” “ What would be the effect of this on the 
good name of the Church?” “How much would 
the mission to the circumcision be likely to effect, 
if it were known that the chief Apostle no longer 
observed the Law?” 

They were startling questions, indeed, which 


132 THE STORY OF ST. PAUL 


Peter’s conduct thus suddenly precipitated upon 
the church in Jerusalem. They had indeed settled 
everything comfortably enough for the Gentile 
churches, among which Paul and Barnabas went, 
and for the purely Jewish communities, among 
which they themselves went; but they had for- 
gotten the mixed communities, like Antioch, where 
Peter now was, and where one could not follow 
both standards at once. Of course it was all very 
simple for Paul, for whom the Law no longer ex- 
isted for either Jew or Gentile ; for he could obey 
it or not, as circumstances required. For him 
neither circumcision nor uncireumcision availed 
anything, but faith working through love; but 
neither James nor John, nor even Peter, had gone 
quite to the length of admitting that all their 
righteousness as Jews and observers of the Law 
was absolutely of no value whatsoever — that they 
were not a whit better than “ sinners of the Gen- 
tiles.” Consequently, it behooved them with all speed 
to draw up a modus vivendi to meet this special 
case. They could not undo what had been done. 
They would not be able altogether to prevent sim- 
ilar occurrences in the future. The one thing that 
could be done was to fall back on the agreement, 
wherein they had undertaken not to proselytize 
Paul’s converts, and Paul had agreed not to 
heathenize Jews. It seemed to them that they had 


IN JERUSALEM AND AT ANTIOCH 133 


a right, on this basis, to demand that a Jew among 
Gentiles, like Peter, should not be compelled, 
against his will, to sacrifice his ceremonial clean- 
ness, perhaps become tainted with the pollutions 
of idols, under penalty of disfellowship. Therefore 
they enacted the four decrees of Acts xv. 29, which 
have no other object, significance, or possible ap- 
plication than to make it possible for a Jew to eat 
with a Gentile without the sacrifice of his ceremo- 
nial cleanness. If the Gentile will only be kind 
enough to see that the meat is kosher meat, not 
strangled, but free from blood, and that it has not 
been offered to an idol, which would make him 
who ate of it a communicant with that particular 
false god (demon) worshiped in the idol, and if 
no fornicator or unclean person? sits at the board, 
then there is no reason in the world why the Jew 
should not eat with him. The Law has nothing 
to say against eating with Gentiles as such, but 
only against the pollutions of idols. Now among 
these, we must particularly note, is one which to 
our ideas seems strangely incongruous with the other 


1 Cf. Heb. xii. 15, 16. The renegade Jew who has abandoned 
his ceremonial cleanness is, in the eyes of the Jewish-Christian, 
an “ Hsau,’’ a fornicator or profane person, who for one mess of 
(forbidden) meat has sold his birthright. He becomes “a root of 
bitterness ” (cf. Deut. xxix. 18 and Acts viii. 23), “ whereby the 
many are defiled.” On the “defilement” of others by the for- 
nicator, see below. 


134 THE STORY OF ST, PAUL 


three “ pollutions.” It is the same anti-Pauline Jew- 
ish-Christian document already quoted, the Olem- 
entine Homilies, which furnishes true explanation 
of the fourth decree. It was not that the Jerusalem 
Christians were so insane as to attempt to break up 
matrimonial relations in the Gentile church by im- 
posing the Mosaic “ prohibited decrees.” It was not 
primarily because of the loose ideas on sexual mo- 
rality prevailing among Gentiles, and especially 
connected with idolatry. Had they attempted to 
furnish a moral code, it certainly would have been 
otherwise constructed than the four decrees. It 
would have contained at least the golden rule, 
which the scribe from whom comes the “ Western ” 
form of the text is kind enough to insert in place 
of the prohibition of things strangled, being rightly 
persuaded that the four decrees as they stand make 
rather a poor substitute for the ten commandments, 
and somewhat lack proportion. No, it was not for 
the moral improvement of the Gentiles that these 
decrees were ever enacted, but for the protection 
of the Jew who should eat with one; “ for,” says 
the Jewish-Christian writer of Clementine Homilies, 
iii. 68, ‘ fornication and adultery are not like other 
sins; for these destroy not only the person himself 
who sins, but those also who eat and associate 
with him.” 


The internal character and application of the 


IN JERUSALEM AND AT ANTIOCH = 135 


Jerusalem decrees is the proof of their real occa- 
sion. They were prepared to meet the emergency 
when Peter at Antioch “ate with the Gentiles,” 
a story which has been stricken out by Luke. Not 
simply because it was, in Professor Chase’s words, 
a dead controversy whose tomb should be left in- 
violate. Suppression of facts of vital importance 
and favorable adjustment of the story, when it 
is carried to the extent that we perceive in Acts, 
would make it difficult for us to acquit Luke of 
the charge of out and out inveracity, were this the 
whole story. It is not. Luke has not taken the 
plain facts and distorted them. He has taken 
another narrative of how Peter came to eat with 
the Gentiles, which was far more creditable to his 
hero than that of Paul, and adjusted it as well as 
he could to his other sources. We have neither 
surprise nor blame for his choosing the story of 
Acts xi. 1-18 in preference to one giving the facts 
as related in Galatians. He does not seem to have 
read Galatians. He doubtless considered this the 
truest as well as the most edifying account. In 
this Jewish-Christian source Peter partakes of 
Gentile food by express divine direction, and with 
the rebuke of a voice from heaven when he ventures 
to expostulate, — “ Not so, Lord, for I have never 
eaten anything that is common or unclean.”! In 


1 Tt is very remarkable that a Jewish-Christian source, such as 


136 THE STORY OF ST. PAUL 


this narrative Peter subsequently defends his course 
on this special issue — “ Thou wentest in to men un- 
circumcised and didst eat with them” — before the 
church in Jerusalem, and obtains its full approval. 
It is hardly necessary to point out that Paul’s ac- 
count is the historical one. Nevertheless, Luke 
adopted the other, and having adopted this account 
of the matter in chapter xi., of course he had no 
room in chapter xv. for one of the other type. 

It is when we look at Gal. ii. 11-23 that we see 
how the omission has resulted in the representa- 
tion of the conclave in Jerusalem and enactment of 
the decrees. Gal. ii. 12 refers to the coming to 
Antioch of a delegation “from James,” with cer- 
tain representations which induced Peter to quietly 
withdraw himself and cease his eating with the 
Gentiles. So we see that there must have been 
a second conclave in Jerusalem, held after the de- 


Acts ix. 32-xi. 18 shows itself in every line to be, should take 
ground more radical, apparently, than that of the “ decrees,” 
on the subject of clean and unclean meats. The vision, Acts x. 
9-16, sweeps away all distinctions on the ground of God’s haying 
created all clean. In the same way the evangelist who is credibly 
declared to present the preaching of Peter adduces the logion, 
“Not that which goeth into a man defileth him, but that which ~ 
cometh forth out of his heart,” as “ making all meats clean” 
(Mk. vii. 19; ef. Lk. xi. 41). Have we here evidence that Peter 
finally did take the broader view of Paul, and only the Jerusalem 
and Antiochian churches struggled for a time to maintain the 
compromise of the decrees ? 


IN JERUSALEM AND AT ANTIOCH 137 


parture of Paul and Barnabas, in which the Apostles 
and elders took their stand on this question of eat- 
ing with the Gentiles. When the delegates reached 
Antioch, they set themselves first of all to win 
privately the assent of Peter and Barnabas, and they 
succeeded. The whole Jewish element gradually 
withdrew from table-fellowship with the Gentile, 
and “even Barnabas,” says Paul with keen emo- 
tion, “‘ was carried away with their hypocrisy.” 

In point of fact, Peter was unable to take a con- 
sistent position because not only his conduct but 
his fundamental principles were inherently incon- 
sistent. Paul, the keen logician, was quick to see 
this, and unsparing to denounce it; for the issue 
to him was vital. It may at first seem strange to 
us that Paul should be unwilling to concede a 
proposition of James to the Jerusalem authorities 
which Peter, and even Barnabas, clearly regarded 
as no more than a fair application of the agreement. 
It seemed a small thing to ask of the Gentiles, 
and on the other hand it meant more than we 
can easily realize to the Jews.! Paul himself had 


1 Ti is difficult for us to conceive that so small a matter (as it 
seemed even to the Corinthian correspondents of Paul, who de- 
clared “ meats will not commend us to God”’), should be made the 
subject of solemn discussion and enactment in Jerusalem. In point 
of fact, one has only to count the pages in the Pauline Hpistles 
devoted to this question of meats that defile or do not defile, to 
see how large importance it assumed in the Jewish mind. The 


138 THE STORY OF ST. PAUL 


engaged not to heathenize the Jewish Christians by 
inducing them to give up the Law. If a Jewish 
Christian ate at the church love-feast with a Gentile 
brother without these precautions against the “ pol- 
lutions of idols,” he brought himself under the ban 
of the Law. He was reduced, in other words, to the 
alternative of renouncing either his legal purity or 
Christian table-fellowship. Was it not fair to re- 
gard these stipulations as a “ necessary” corollary 
of the agreement ? Must the Jewish Christian con- 
cede everything, and Paul nothing at all? So | 
Peter felt. So even Barnabas felt. So felt all the 
Jewish element at Antioch; but so did not Paul. 
Paul had lived for fifteen years the life of a 
practical missionary among the Gentiles, and he 
knew, as these Jews, even Barnabas, did not, that 
the attempt to impose these rules of diet on the 
Gentiles was hopeless.1 Two of the rules (kosher 


Jerusalem conference was not the last occasion on which the Church 
has thought peace attained by settlement of the great principles, 
only to see war breaking out with tenfold violence over some triv- 
ial but concrete and tangible point of application. How the Jew- 
ish Christian felt may be perceived by reading the tales of Mac- 
eabean martyrs, who suffered torture and death rather than eat 
“ unclean ” food, and from Peter’s protest of horror even against 
asuggestion from heaven itself: Not so, Lord, for I have never 
eaten anything that is common or unclean.” 

1 How impracticable it is may be judged by our own conduct. 
Of all writings and parts of writings in the Bible, there is not one 
which claims for itself such authority, human and divine, and 


IN JERUSALEM AND AT ANTIOCH 139 


meat and abstinence from blood) proved in actual 
practice a dead letter from the start. The other two 
were needless, because already covered by moral 
considerations. The result of attempts to enforce 
the decrees appears in stray references of the later 
Jewish-Christian literature. Thus the Western text 
of Acts already partially transforms them into 
a moral code. The author of Revelation (about 95 
A. D.) excuses his readers from the “other bur- 
dens,” retaining only the prohibition of :dolothuta 
and fornication. On these he is strenuous. Finally, 
the “Teaching of the Twelve Apostles,” in about 
120, leaves the matter of meats to the individual 
conscience. “ But as concerning foods, bear that 
which thou art able; however, abstain by all means 
from meat sacrificed to idols; for it is the worship 
of dead gods.” 

Thus the two prohibitions which remained were 
such as were superfluous; for you will see from 
Paul’s Epistles how strenuous he is everywhere in 
opposing the loose morality of the Greeks, and you 


such importance, as the Jerusalem decrees. In regard to apostolic 
authorship, we have no reason to doubt their claim to emanate 
directly from the whole body of “the Apostles and Elders.” In 
regard to inspiration, they begin, “It seemed good to the Holy 
Ghost.’’ In regard to importance, the decrees are expressly 
declared to be “ necessary.” And what Christian to-day pays the 
slightest attention to them ? 

1 See the articles by alrenralall in Zeitschrift fiir wiss. Theo- 
logie, 1898-99. 


140 THE STORY OF ST. PAUL 


have only to read the section of 1 Cor. in which he 
answers the questions of the church “ concerning 
things offered to idols,” 1 to see that he peremptorily 
forbade participation in an idol feast, comparing it 
to the sin of Beth-Peor. On the other hand, in the 
market, or a friend’s house, the Christian should 
take what came and eat it without fear or question 
“as untothe Lord;” forif he gave God the thanks 
(cixapioria), his communion in eating would be with 
God, the original giver, and not with the * demon ” 
to whom it might possibly have been offered. Thus 
all things were clean to him, and he insisted on this 
liberty for himself and his churches. However, to 
avoid giving offense, or tempting a weak brother, 
he would go to any length in the voluntary sur- 
render of his liberty ; and his converts must do like- 
wise. So, for Paul, the matter solved itself, and 
Peter at first followed this example. 

But it was not the impracticability of the pro- 
posed modus vivendi which made Paul stand out 
against it. It was the principle of liberty involved. 
He makes two serious accusations against Peter and 
Barnabas: (1) “hypocrisy” (he is using strong 
language), by which he means that they were false 
to their acknowledged principles ; and (2) violation 
of the agreement: dvayxdles 7a Evy "Tovdailew, “ Why 
art thou compelling the Gentiles to Judaize?” 


1 1 Cor. viii.—x. 


IN JERUSALEM AND AT ANTIOCH 141 


That was rather turning the tables on the dele- 
gation from James. Their contention was that un- 
restricted table-fellowship compelled the Jew to 
heathenize. Paul claimed that restriction compelled 
the Gentiles to Judaize; but was not one side as 
much in the right as the other? Technically, yes ; 
for the difficulty was an inherent weakness of the 
agreement itself in making no provision for mixed 
communities. Technically, one side had as much 
ground of complaint as the other, and certainly both 
were honest.1 In reality, Paul alone was in the right, 
because the ultimate question was as to the nature 
of Christianity itself. Paul knew that on this ques- 
tion of the perpetuation or surrender of Jewish 
privilege in the matter of ceremonial “cleanness ” 
he represented Jesus better than did the authors 


? 


of the “decrees;”’ and he could and did prove it, 
though he does not seem at first to have carried 
the church in Antioch with him. That indeed was 
too much to expect. 

Paul, in the argument which he reports to us as 
held by him against Peter in the presence of the 
whole Antioch church, strikes right at the funda- 
mental weakness of his opponent’s position. Peter’s 


1 It is simply absurd to think of men like Peter and Barnabas 
intentionally going back, under the feeble pressure of “ certain 
from James,” on the principles they had heroically and victoriously 
championed in Jerusalem. Their violation of the agreement was 
not intentional any more than their ‘‘ hypocrisy ” was conscious. 


142 THE STORY OF ST. PAUL 


vacillating conduct was the logical outcome of their 
general halfway attitude. They had conceded that 
Gentiles might be saved without the Law, but were 
not prepared to let go the superior claims of right- 
eousness which in their view the observarice of it 
conferred upon Jews like themselves. A man could 
be saved without the Law through faith in Christ, 
even if he were a “sinner of the Gentiles” — that 
they had admitted ; and we cannot deny that they 
had admitted it freely and generously ; but they by 
no means admitted that it would be wise, or even 
safe, for one who was “ by nature a Jew, and nota 
sinner of the Gentiles,” to let go his claims on this 
score, and trust to'the grace of God in Christ alone. 
Conversely, it was sufficient for salvation if a sin- 
ner of the Gentiles simply had faith in Christ, but 
it was much safer and better for him if he was cir- 
cumcised and became in every respect an adopted 
son of Abraham. Hence, on the disputed point, 
Jews should not be forced to come down to the 
Gentile level. The Gentile, in table-fellowship with 
the Jew, should come wp to the Jew’s level. 

It was Paul’s profound and agonizing religious 
experience which enabled him to puncture the spe- 
cious plausibility of this logic; and he drove his 
argument directly at that which, in Peter’s experi- 
ence, came nearest to his own. There had been a 
time when Peter, too, had wept bitterly over his sin. 


———— + 


IN JERUSALEM AND AT ANTIOCH 143 


Nor was it works of the Law which had brought 
him out of his despair, but the simple grace of God 
in Christ, the conviction, borne in through the 
shadow of Calvary itself, a gloom blacker for Peter 
than for all the rest, borne in with the light of the 
resurrection dawn in the simple words of the most 
ancient doctrine of the Church: “ He died for our 
sins, according to the Scriptures.” 

Peter, if any one, could appreciate that which 
had been clear to Paul ever since the days of his 
fierce persecution of the Way, — that there cannot 
be two ways of salvation, one for Jews, the other 
for Gentiles, nor two pleas before the judgment 
seat of God, a righteousness of one’s own, even that 
which is of the Law, and then, to cover deficien- 
cies, faith in Christ to justify one “‘ from all things 
from which we could not be justified by the Law 
of Moses.” Peter, if any one, should appreciate 
that “if righteousness is through the Law, then 
Christ died in vain.” 

So, then, the step of coming down to the level 
of these “sinners of the Gentiles” is one which 
Paul had no need to ask at Jerusalem, because he 
had a right to assume it as already taken. For 
when we, Jews as we were, believed on Christ 
Jesus, it was “that we might be justified by faith 
in Christ Jesus, and not by works of the Law.” 
With our own hands we destroyed the barrier be- 


see +. 


144 THE STORY OF ST. PAUL 


tween Jew and Gentile because we found it to be 
also a barrier between us and God. If now we 
attempt to build up again that barrier, we stand 
self-condemned “hypocrites,” false to our own 
principles. 

Those were cutting words that Paul used against 
the chief Apostle, and against his own old mission- 
ary companion. They echo still, the very self-same 
words, through the denunciations of the Simon- 
Magus-Paul in one branch of the Church which 
never forgave him. Probably Paul foresaw what it 
would cost him. He must have known that he 
could not expect to retain the confidence of the 
Antioch church, and that the alliance with Barna- 
bas would be broken off. If Peter and the elder 
Apostles ever forgave him, it would be because the 
Spirit of Christ worked in them beyond the power 
of common men. As for the agreement, won after 
so great a struggle at Jerusalem, he was sure it 

.would not be repudiated by the Apostles. They 
would undoubtedly respect it to the letter, and 
make no attempt to invade his mission field; but 
from the “false brethren,” he must expect the 
worst. They considered his inducing Peter to dis- 
regard the Law a distinct violation on his part. 
They certainly would not consider themselves 
bound by it, even if James and the Pillars did. 
He was thrown back now upon his own resources, 


j IN JERUSALEM AND AT ANTIOCH 145 


and instead of the tacit support of the mother 
church, he would have, he knew, the active hos- 
tility of some, while he would ba unable to appeal 
to the support of even the most friendly. 

On the other hand, the irrepressible conflict had 
come. The storm had broken, and he had main- 
tained his cause, however few he carried with him. 
Paul was conscious that he had stood for the right, 
and in the light of truth and history had won his 
ease. The half-gospel Peter and the rest were pre- 
pared to offer to the Gentiles, its limits prescribed 
from Jerusalem, always with the tacit assumption 
that to be a Christian is well enough, but to be 
a Jewish Christian is a little better, was hopelessly 
impracticable. It certainly was no gospel Paul 
could preach. Moreover it was not true. After all, 
if Antioch, Syria, and Cilicia accepted the decrees, 
and Cyprus clung to Barnabas, there remained the 
churches of Galatia for a new base of operations, 
and at least the coast was clear. He would abide 
strictly by the agreement of non-interference ; nay, 
he would avail himself of that parting request to 


23 


‘remember the poor.” He would take up in devo- 
tion and charity and utmost scrupulousness of con- 
sideration his vast work of evangelization, and see 
if God would not vindicate his calling in the har- 
vest given, while the Spirit of Christ should heal the 


breach which seemed now irreparable. 


146 THE STORY OF ST. PAUL 


With such reflections Paul bade a long farewell 
to Antioch and the scenes of his earlier labors, 
to begin, as it were, his missionary career anew; 
but in departing for Galatia he took with him one 
token of happy augury, one link of connection with 
the mother church. Silas, one of the delegates 
from James, if Acts be right, cast in his lot with 
Paul. 


LECTURE V 


FOUNDING OF THE GREEK CHURCHES AND 
BATTLE WITH THE JUDAIZERS 


We left the Apostle Paul as he was setting out from 
Antioch after a rupture with the Jerusalem church 
in the person of Peter, and with the Antioch church 
in the person of Barnabas. Conditions outwardly 
seemed little less than disastrous. Paul had prac- 
tically to begin his missionary career anew: and 
not only must he rely exclusively upon his own 
resources for support and authority ; he had good | 
reason to expect active hostility, if not from the 
Apostles and church-leaders in Jerusalem, certainly 
from subordinates, whom he could not, of course, 
under present circumstances, ask their ecclesiastical 
superiors to restrain. 

On the other hand, he was in the right, and he 
knew it. He had with him, besides, in the per- 
son of Titus, the undeniable, speaking indorsement 
of his free gospel, without the yoke of the Law. 
Wherever Titus went, there it was impossible to 
deny that in the test-instance the very Pillars had 
acknowledged that Paul’s essential principle of sal- 
vation without the works of the Law was right. He 


148 THE STORY OF ST. PAUL 


had with him also Silas, or Silvanus as he is ealled 
in the Epistles, as further witness, if required. 
Moreover, this was not the first time that Paul had 
carried on missionary work among the Gentiles on 
his own resources. The labors, perils, sufferings, 
successes, of those fifteen years “in the regions of 
Syria and Cilicia,” of which we catch so brief a 
glimpse in 2 Cor. xi. 23-31, were an asset not easy to 
overestimate in the inventory of external resources. 
Finally, there was Galatia as a new base of opera- 
tions, churches of so predominantly Gentile origin, 
and so clearly the fruit of Paul’s personal initiative, 
that even the Jerusalem decrees leave them out from 
their attempted “sphere of influence.” To these, 
accordingly, Paul now betook himself with Silva- 
nus, resolved, we may be sure, to do all in his power 
to avoid further offense to the Jewish brethren, 
even while he counted it his greatest ground of 
hope and confidence that he had vindicated, even 
through painful strife, his free gospel and his apos- 
tleship “‘ not from men, neither through a man, but 
from Jesus Christ and God the Father, who raised 
him from the dead.” 

The solitary incident Luke is able to report of 
this second visit to Galatia is one on which erities 
have thrown what seems to me unwarranted sus-— 
picion. For example, Professor MeGiffert! argues 


1 Apostolic Age, pp. 282 f. 


FOUNDING OF THE GREEK CHURCHES 149 


from the vehement denunciations in Galatians! of 
Christians submitting to circumcision, without spe- 
cific mention of Timothy’s case, that it is quite 
impossible that Paul, in Galatia, immediately after 
the test case of Titus, should have taken Timothy 
of Lystra, whose mother only was a Jewess, “and 
circumcised him, because of the Jews that were 
in those parts.” If, indeed, we are to hold, with 
McGiffert, that Galatians was written before this 
visit, then there is not the slightest possibility of 
the statement being true; but it is not easy to see 
how Luke, who from this point on begins to be 
fully informed,? could be mistaken on such a mat- 
ter; and there are independent and very strong 
reasons, such as the allusion to a second visit? to 
Galatia in the letter, for thinking that Galatians 
was written some time after. If so, then the 
alleged place and time and purpose of the circum- 
cision of Timothy are all exactly what we might 
expect. Indeed, Galatians itself has no objection 
to cireumcision as such. Twice it declares that cir- 
cumcision is nothing, and uncircumcision is no- 
thing. Nay, more, it implies a still more conciliatory 
attitude in previous times. Paul’s enemies were 


1 EF. g. Gal. v. 2. 

2 The Diary begins six verses further on. 

8 Gal. iv. 13. McGiffert explains the second visit as being the 
return journey from the furthest Galatian city (Derbe), throuzh 
Lystra, Iconium, and Antioch (Acts xiv. 21). 


150 ; THE STORY OF ST. PAUL 


citing his own action as inconsistent on this point. 
Paul is obliged to defend his conduct by saying, 
“Tf I still preach circumcision, why am I still per- 
secuted?” Clearly his Judaizing opponents have 
seized upon some act of his which, in their inter- 
pretation, was “still preaching circumcision.” ! 
What case better than the circumcision of Timothy 
in Lystra can we imagine, then, which might be 
effectively used to the Galatians as proof that Paul 
was not always so rigid as in Jerusalem? We may, 
indeed, be sure that after one such experience of 
the abuse of his generous dealing Paul did not re- 
peat the act; but under the special circumstances 
immediately following the conflict in Antioch, Paul 
might well go so far in the application of the prin- 
ciple by which he proposed to solve the difficulties 
of a modus vivendi, as to expose himself to the 
danger of misrepresentation.2, And if Paul had 


1 Compare the question after the anathema on the disturbers, 
Gal. i. 10, “ Am I now showing myself a man-pleaser ? ”’ 

2 The case is parallel to that alleged in Acts xxi. 26. Both 
are denied by critics, on the ground that Paul would have 
been false to his principles. Of course it is not accidental 
that Acts inserts both of these test instances and omits the 
greater instance of Titus on the other side. “ Reticence ” cannot 
be denied; but inveracity does not seem probable. Both in- 
stances are deliberately chosen, the one by Paul, the other by 
James, and are highly conspicuous. The object in both cases is 
the same. Paul is to demonstrate in a public way that he is not 
an iconoclast, inducing the Jews among the Gentiles to forsake 


FOUNDING OF THE GREEK CHURCHES 151 


just come from Galatia, and taken this conciliatory 
action — of course not without full explanation of 
his motives —‘“on account of the Jews in those 
parts,’ why should we expect him in his letter to 
repeat the explanation, and not rather say, “ Here- 
after I will make no concessions.” ! 

Needless to say that Luke is not correct in 
representing that as the new missionary party 
“passed through the cities” from Lystra north- 
westward, “through the Phrygo-Galatic region,” 
aiming at Ephesus, the great metropolis of Asia 
Minor, “they delivered them the decrees for to 
keep, which had been ordained of the Apostles and 
Elders that were at Jerusalem.”” Paul undoubtedly 
took the same pains he takes in his letters to the 


the Law. It cannot, indeed, be denied that Paul did teach Jews, 
as well as Gentiles, wherever he came across them in his mission- 
field, to put no confidence whatever in obedience to the Law as a 
ground of justification. In that sense he did teach them to “ for- 
sake ” it. On the other hand, he was scrupulous to the last degree 
against leading ‘ the weak brother” to give up any legal practice 
without the full approval of his conscience. Nay, more, he did 
all in his power to sustain among Jews, and Gentiles too, the 
teaching value of the Law and all its rites. Circumcision itself 
was to him a type of baptism (Col. ii. 11), and had it not been 
transformed by his opponents into a token of subjection to the 
» Law, Paul himself would have continued to reeommend Jewish 
parents to perform it. The test cases of Luke are, therefore, as 
true to one pole of Pauline principle as the test case of Galatians 
is to the other. 
1 Cf. Gal. i. 10; v. 11. 


152 THE STORY OF ST. PAUL 


Thessalonians and Corinthians to enforce such 
morality in sexual relations, and such avoidance of 
real “ pollutions of idols” by participation in hea- 
then temple-revelry and feasting, as would leave no 
cause of ‘offence either to Jews or Greeks, or to 
the Church of God.” Still he cannot have placed 
his Galatian converts on a less liberal footing than 
the Corinthian; and in Corinth the only law is 
‘“‘in necessariis puritas, in non-necessariis libertas, 
in omnibus caritas.” In fact, the decrees followed, 
to Paul’s mind, just the wrong way. His letter 
suggests almost the contrary of Luke’s statement. 
Gal. i. 9 and iv. 16 allude to warnings already 
given against Judaizing teaching. These cannot, 
of course, have been given on the original tour of 
evangelization,! and if on the second, they antago- 
nize the decrees. 

It is with the so-called Second Missionary Jour- 
ney, whose base was the lesser Antioch of Pisidia 
(for it was Paul's practice to depend on the free gift 
of churches in the rear for carrying on the war 
at the front”), that we begin to get, in patches of 


1 Gal. i. 9 seems even to present a contrast in the number of 
the verbs. ‘‘ As we warned you before, so say I now again.” The 
companion included under the “we” can scarcely be Barnabas ; 
it might well be Silvanus, who at the time of writing (Corinth, 
A. D. 50, as per Acts xviii. 1-4) was not with Paul. 

2 To imagine that Paul by his personal manual labor could 
defray the expenses of the whole missionary party is not only 





FOUNDING OF THE GREEK CHURCHES 153 


light falling here and there upon Paul’s toilsome 
path, the actual words of a traveling companion, 
we know not who, incorporated in the history of 
Luke much as, in the Old Testament, fragments 
of the diary of Nehemiah are incorporated in the 
priestly history called Chronicies. 

When this unknown companion joined the party, 
they were at the little port of Troas, at the very 
extremity of Asia, and apparently at the extremity 
of their slender resources as well. From Antioch 
Paul had looked down longingly at the teeming 
province of Proconsular Asia. There lay Ephesus, 
the vast metropolis of the Greek world, ancient 
seat of Ionic philosophy. Nearer at hand lay the 
Lyeus valley, soon to number the great churches 
of Laodicea, Hierapolis, and Colosse among “the 
Churches of Asia.” As Rome later, so Ephesus 
now was the strategic point, the goal of Paul’s 
sublime ambition. But “they were forbidden of 


to tax credulity, but to tax it unnecessarily. The idea rests on a 
misunderstanding of Paul’s principle: to “ make the Gospel with- 
out charge” to those to whom he brought it. So hedid. He was 
more scrupulous than the most honorable rabbi, or disciple of 
Socrates, who scorns to receive a fee for his teaching. He “labored 
night and day with his own hands, that he might not be charge- 
able to any.” But churches which had once received the Gospel 
were urged to contribute toward its transmission to others. Even 
while Paul was laboring in Thessalonica, and found it hard work 
to keep alive (1 Thess. ii. 9), the very recent converts of Philippi 
“sent once and again to relieve his need ” (Phil. iy. 15, 16). 


154 THE STORY OF ST. PAUL 


the Holy Ghost to speak the word in Asia.” Why? 
Doubtless for the same reason which led Paul, 
when after some three years’ mission work in Greece 
he returned to Ephesus, to still put off an urgent . 
invitation of the Christians! there, to remain with 
them and lead them. “ When they asked him to 
abide, he consented not, but saying, I will return 
again unto you if God will, he set sail for Czsa. 
rea and Antioch.” We know Paul’s rule to preach 
the Gospel only where Christ had not even been 
named. There was double reason now for not 
‘building on another man’s foundation.” The 
coming of Paul into an existing Christian commu- 
nity at this time, even if not a violation of the 
agreement, could only lead to the most painful 
rekindling of strife. This was not apparent to— 
Paul alone. The expression of Acts, “they were - 
forbidden of the Holy Ghost,” means, as we see by 
the subsequent use of the same expression for the 
warnings given Paul by Agabus and other prophets 
against going to Jerusalem, that in Pisidian Anti- 
och, where conditions in the neighboring province 
were of course better known than to Paul, the pro- 
phets gave inspired utterance to a disapproval of 
his plan. 

1 Acts has “ Jews” in accordance with its regular pragma- 
tism; but the story itself, though confused, shows the existence 


of “disciples” (xiv. 1) of a peculiar Johannine type of Chris- 
tianity in Ephesus. 


FOUNDING OF THE GREEK CHURCHES 155 


With saddened hearts, but undiscouraged, the 
little party turned northward. Bithynia was their 
next objective, where Greek commerce had already 
long ago established its flourishing colonies along 
‘the south shore of the Euxine. It was a long and 
toilsome journey over sparsely peopled mountain 
districts to the southern frontier of Mysia, whence 
they could strike northeast into Bithynia. We may 
well believe their slender means were now well-nigh 
exhausted ; but here again they were met by the 
same disappointment. “The Spirit of Jesus suf- 
fered them not to enter.”1 To borrow Paul’s own 
expression of a few years later, “there remained 
no more room for them in those parts.” Skirting 
the southern border of Mysia, they came to the ex- 
treme limit of Asia. At Troas they stood beside 
the Hellespont, conscious of a nobler mission than 
that of the Persian conqueror who, a half-millen- 
nium before, had here paused to survey his fancied 
prey, the Grecian west, but conscious also that their 
help must come from God if complete collapse were 
not to be the fate of Paul’s Gentile mission. 


1 Pliny’s letter to Trajan at the beginning of the second cen- 
tury shows that Bithynia at that time was one of the very ancient 
seats of Christianity. Not improbably Paul found himself here 
also forestalled in his plans, as at Ephesus. ‘“‘ The Spirit of Je- 
sus” will haye found utterance in the words of some Christian 
prophet (cf. 1 Cor. xiv. 3), this time probably one of the mission- 


ary party. 


156 THE STORY OF ST. PAUL 


Such are the circumstances which give us the 
inward significance of Paul’s vision of the “man 
of Macedonia.” Professor Ramsay conjectures that 
the author of the Diary, who here joins the party, 
and who clearly stands in some peculiarly intimate 
relation with Philippi, was objectified in Paul’s 
vision. To this there seems to be no objection, 
provided we do not identify the new-comer with the 
author of Acts as it stands. Tradition attributes 
this book to a certain Luke, said to have been of 
Antioch, of whom we know nothing whatever, except 
that he is one of a group surrounding Paul at Rome, 
a physician and a Gentile. There are strong indi- 
cations, per contra, that the Diarist was a Jew,! be- 


1 Who but a Jew would date the season of year by the Jew- 
ish calendar: “ We sailed away from Philippi after the days of 
Unleavened Bread ’’ (mazzoth, Acts xx. 6); “the yoyage was now 
dangerous because the Fast [day of Atonement] was now already 
gone by” (Acts xxvii. 9) ? So of the parts which are too closely 
connected with the Diary to be readily attributed to the final 
compiler, and yet in the nature of the case must haye been subse- 
quently added, such as Paul’s speech in Athens, in Miletus, and 
on shipboard (Acts xvii. 22-31, xx. 18-35, xxvii. 21-26). The 
understanding of Paul is superior to the final editor’s here, as 
well as in the speech before Agrippa (Acts xxvi. 1-23), already 
discussed. Yet the Jewish point of view is apparent in the appeal 
to visions and angels (xxvi. 23; cf. xxvi. 10), and in phrases such 
as “the people (6 Aads) and the Gentiles” (xxvi. 17-23). Dalman 
(Worte Jesu, pp. 23-26, 33) has shown that expressions character- 
izing the Diary itself are unlikely in a writer of Greek birth. 
Thus kal éyévero (Heb. $7759) is a pronounced Septuagintism, im- 
probable for a Greek. Yet it is used habitually by the Diarist _ 


FOUNDING OF THE GREEK CHURCHES 157 


longed in Philippi, and certainly was too closely 
associated with Paul to so entirely mistake his stand- 
point as does the author of Acts. In proportion as 
we come nearer the Diary Acts tends to agree with 
Paul. In the earlier parts, where, as we have seen, 
the compiler rests on a Jewish-Christian source, he 
swings almost to the other pole ; but even to the end 
the ecclesiastical pragmatism dominates. The Diary 
is overlaid with more or less legendary embellish- 
ments, such as the story of the earthquake which 
releases Paul and Silas from prison in Philippi, and 
with expansions, such as elaborate speeches which 
the author particularly delights to put in the mouth 
of Paul “before governors and kings,” the Coun- 
cil of the Areopagus in Athens, the Sanhedrin in 
Jerusalem, Felix, and later Festus and Agrippa in 
Cesarea, and the “chief of the Jews” in Rome. 
There is thus a foundation which is strictly histori- 
cal, and a superstructure which is less historical in 
proportion as it rises above the base. With which 
shall we connect the name of Luke? If we consider 


(xxi. 1-5, xxvii. 44, xxviii. 8); and similar Jewish modes of 
speech occur in the adjoining contexts (cf. xxviii. 17, and ém 
mayTos mpooémov THs yis, xvii. 26). If it be maintained that 
the mention of the ‘‘ many lights’’ in xx. 8, as if connected with 
the drowsiness of Eutychus, xx. 9, betokens the observation of the 
physician, the remark will be more than counterbalanced by the 
application in the same verse of the word vexpés to the body of 
Eutychus in its condition of insensibility. 


158 THE STORY OF ST. PAUL 


Luke to be the Diarist, the name will have passed 
thence to the whole work, much as the name Mat- 
thew has passed from the Original Hebrew compila- 
tion of Logia to our first Gospel, and “ Nehemiah ” 
to that portion of Chronicles which incorporates 
his diary ; but there is much to be said for the 
reverse conclusion. There is some weight in the 
argument for the tradition based on the “ medical 
language ” of the final author, and his Gentile and 
Pauline predilections. The strong Jewish colora- 
tion of a large part of Luke-Acts can then be 
explained by minimizing the author’s connection 
with Paul, so as to include no more than is im- 
plied in Col. iv. 11-14, Philem. 24, 2 Tim. iv. 
10, and throwing the responsibility for the errors, 
legendary traits, and un-Pauline views upon Jew- 
ish-Christian and Petrine sources; but along with 
the other sources manipulated by the final compiler 
for his own purposes, and sometimes against the 
original sense, will be the Diary too. For the 
Gentile Luke surely did not write his Diary in 
Jewish Greek, nor is it natural to suppose that so 
close a companion as the Diarist could fail to ap- 
preciate Paul’s keen and sensitive feeling as to his 
apostleship and commission to the Gentiles; but 
this we have seen to be the case with the Book of 
Acts as a whole. 

Indorsement of the early tradition which makes 


: FOUNDING OF THE GREEK CHURCHES 159 


: 


the Gentile physician Luke the author of the com- 
plete work seems, therefore, to involve giving up the 
idea that he was the Diarist; for besides the lan- 
guage, the adjustment of the Diary to the sources 
followed in the rest of the book is such as could 
not well be made by any early companion of Paul, 
least of all by the author of the Diary himself. 
Our plan restricts us to the most cursory treat- 
ment of those portions of the story where the light 
of contemporary narrative shines most unobscured. 
The narrative of Acts is supremely interesting just 
where the Diary comes in, and therefore it is with 
regret that we hurry past the months of labor in 
Macedonia, Paul’s second great provincial founda- 
tion, and the most beloved. Here the story is both 
vivid and familiar: the Sabbath meeting at the 
place of prayer by the river, Lydia of Thyatira, and 
the exorcism of the Pythoness. I trust you know it 
also in the light of Ramsay’s interesting contribu- 
tions, which are not unnaturally fullest where the 
Diarist is nearest at hand; but we already pass 
into the penumbra at the point where Paul and 


1 Tt surely is incredible that the author of the Diary, who, in 
company with Paul, met the delegation from the church in Rome 
at Appii Forum (Acts xxviii. 15), should carry his pragmatism 
to the extent of making Paul, even here in Rome, go through 
the recular form of going first to the synagogue and offering the 
Gospel to the Jews, then when they — who now hear it for the 
first time ! — have proved obduraie, “ turning to the Gentiles.” 


160 THE STORY OF ST. PAUL 


Silas are arrested for the exorcism. Their new- 
found companion was then separated from them. 
He no longer speaks until the first person is re- 
sumed years after, when Paul returns again to 
Philippi on his way to Jerusalem. The narrative 
continues, however, in the third person, to tell of 
the imprisonment, the miraculous release, the flight 
through Amphipolis and Apollonia to Thessalonica, 
and the founding there of a second Macedonian 
church. 

I have already said that the miraculous release 
shows the idealizing influence of legend, for there 
is no allusion to it in Paul’s letters, nor even in 
the story of Acts itself, when in the morning Paul 
and Silas are brought again before the magistrates. 
The scribe of the Western text, indeed, succeeds 
in removing the surprising ignorance of the magis- 
trates that anything unusual had oceurred dur- 
ing the night; but the older and better manuscripts 
leave the difficulty unexplained. It is here as in 
the imprisonment and miraculous release of Peter 
and all the Apostles in Acts v. 19-42. Events take 
their course precisely as if there had been no super- 
natural intervention. The magistrates summon 
them in the morning and the case is nolled ; not 
because anybody appears to know anything of the 
angelic liberation, or the earthquake, but because 
the prosecution have no case. In both instances 


iin at 


FOUNDING OF THE GREEK CHURCHES 161 


the real story has gained a reflected light from the 
providential deliverance of Peter from prison and 
martyrdom through the sudden death of Agrippa. 
Peter might well exclaim, “ Now know I of a truth 
that the Lord hath sent his angel and delivered 
me out of the hand of Herod, and from all the ex- 
pectation of the people of the Jews.’ In the nar- 
rative as we have it, this angel, the death angel 
of Agrippa, becomes an actual visible being, who 
opens iron doors for Peter. Something of his hea- 
venly radiance sheds a reflected glow both over the 
previous release in Jerusalem! and the release of 
Paul and Silas in Philippi. 

The story of Thessalonica has not the legendary 
embellishments, but here, too, Luke falls into his 
stereotyped form: (1) The evangelists prove to 
the Jews from the Scriptures, that Jesus is the 
Christ. (2) The Greek proselytes believe, while 
the Jews are hardened. (3) The Jews provoke a riot 
and drive out the apostles. “ Three sabbath days ” 
is the time within which Luke frames his whole story; 
but even Ramsay admits that some six months at 
least must have been spent in Thessalonica. For 
Paul, in his letters written to the church a few weeks 
or months later, implies a work of at least this 
extent, and years after reminds the Philippians 
how they had made repeated contributions for his 

1 Acts v. 19-26. Compare this and xvi. 23-39 with xii. 5-11. 


162 THE STORY OF ST. PAUL 


support at this time of the “ beginning of the 
Gospel in Macedonia.” ! It is not, however, Luke’s 
ignorance of, or indifference to, some of the real 
events of the Macedonian mission; nor his dis- 
agreement with 1 Thess. ii. 1, where it appears, 
contrary to Acts xvii. 14, that Timothy accom- 
panied Paul to Athens, which merits any special 
remark. We concern ourselves only with the 
general viewpoint of Luke, because that affects all 
his descriptions. Thus 1 Thess. i. 9, 10, shows 
that the church in Thessalonica consisted, as a whole, 
of converts made by Paul from heathenism. The 
next chapter, verse 14, shows that the persecutions 
endured were from Greeks. Both Epistles imply 
a Gentile church. There is not a line in either to 
indicate that there was so much as a single Jew in 
the whole city. Now we have no need to deny that 
Paul began in Thessalonica by preaching for three 
sabbaths in the synagogue. We know from the 
Diary that the missionaries started in some such 
way at Philippi. We need not question the Jews 
provoking the riot. We must realize, however, that 
what Luke tells us as if it were the whole is often 
only the beginning (in the case of Rome not even 
that), because Luke is simply finding confirmation 
of his theory of the relation of Church and Syn- 


1 Pinching poverty is one of the impressions of this period 
which we get from 1 Thess. ii. 6-12. 


ee 


FOUNDING OF THE GREEK CHURCHES 163 


agogue. Thus in Corinth, too, the only thing Luke 
has to tell is Paul’s relation with the synagogue, and 
the discomfiture of the Jews at Gallio’s decision ; 
but read the letters to the Corinthians, and the 
Jews and synagogue again sink wholly out of view. 
Accordingly we must look at the story of this 
great campaign of the Gospel in Greece with our 
own eyes, and not merely through the spectacles 
of a writer who is all preoccupied with the relative 
claims of Synagogue and Church. On this great 
campaign against Macedonia and Achaia Paul was, 
in his own language, “‘ turning men unto God from 
idols, to serve a living and true God, and to wait 
for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the 
dead, even Jesus, which delivereth us from the 
wrath to come.” It is because it corresponds so 
closely to this outline that the speech of Paul in 
Athens, Acts xvii. 18-34, is deserving of con- 
sideration, as well representing the type of his mis- 
sionary preaching ;! not because of the highly im- 
probable representation that it was delivered to an 
audience of the Stoic and Epicurean philosophers 
assembled at the world-famous Athenian tribunal. 
I have already pointed out how genuinely Pau- 
line is the longing to meet the yearning of the best 
in heathendom after the Unknown God. This fig- 


1 See Sabatier, The Apostle Paul, chapter i., “ Paul’s Mission- 
ary Preaching.” 


164 THE STORY OF ST. PAUL ' 


ure of the groping hands outstretched in the dark- 
ness strikes the same note as the vision at Troas, 
the man of Macedonia entreating, “ Come and help 
us.” “The passing over of sins done aforetime in 
the forbearance of God” of Rom. iii. 24 has its 
parallel in the “ times of ignorance which God over- 
looked ” of Acts xvii. 30, and the impending judg- 


ment whereof assurance has been given by the ~ 


resurrection of Christ reminds one strongly of 
1 Thess. i. 10. Thus the address, in distinction from 
that attributed to Paul in Acts xiii. 16-41, is really 
of Pauline type ; but it must also be acknowledged 
that the address as a whole contains rather the 
commonplaces of the Jewish propaganda against 
heathenism, than anything distinctive of Paul. It 
should be read side by side with the typical mis- 
sionary address quoted by Clement of Alexandria 
from the so-called Preaching of Peter ;1 for in sub- 
stance the same “ preaching” appears in yarious 
forms in Tatian, Athenagoras, the Epistle to Dio- 
gnetus, and the Apology of Aristides. It is even 
recognizable in a pre-Christian form in the Wisdom 
of Solomon and the Epistle of Aristeas. “ Luke,” 


accordingly, did not need short-hand notes of Paul’s _ 


sermon to write a good description. ‘ Peter says,” 

quotes Clement, “ Know then that there is one God, 

who made the beginning of all things, and holds 
1 Dated by Harnack about 140. 


1 


FOUNDING OF THE GREEK CHURCHES 165 


the power of the end; and is the Invisible, who sees 
all things, uncontainable, all-containing, needing 
nothing, whom all things need, and by whom they 
are ; incomprehensible, everlasting, unmade, Maker 
of all things by the word of his power. Worship 
this God, not as the Greeks, since they are carried 
away by ignorance and know not God, but giving 
shape to the things he gave them power to use, 
stocks and stones, brass and iron, gold and silver 
—matter, and setting up the things which are 
slaves for use and possession, worship them.” The 
baseness of the Egyptian worship of living animals 
is next denounced, heathen sacrifice being declared 
an “offering of dead things to the dead,! as to 
gods,” a proof of “ unthankfulness to God in the 
denial of his existence by these things.” 2 In the 
Christian form of the comparison, this Egyptian type 
of false worship, which in the pre-Christian ® offsets 
the Greek, becomes simply a part of the description 


1 Cf. Ps.-Aristeas (Kautzsch), 138, “The Egyptians worship 
animals and creeping things, and offer sacrifice to living and even 
dead.” Compare also the Teaching of the Twelve, offerings to idols 
“the worship of dead gods,” and Jubilees, loc. cit. 

2 Cf. Acts xiv. 17; Rom. i. 21-23; Wisdom xi. 23, xiii. 1-9, 10, 
xiy. 21-28. See Bousset, Rel. d. Jud., 1902, pp. 170-174. 

8 In Wisdom xy. 18 the text is corrupt, but the succeeding con- 
text, xv. 18—xix. 22, shows that it is the Egyptians who are, as 
in Aristeas, the type of that baser heathenism which does not even 
clothe divinity in the beauty of the human form, but worships 
animals and creeping things. 


166 THE STORY OF ST. PAUL 


of heathenism, as in Rom. i. 23. In Aets it is 
naturally omitted as unsuited to an Athenian audi- 
ence. That also is omitted in Acts which in the 
Preaching of Peter, Apology of Aristides, Tatian, 
etc., is substituted as second element in the com- 
parison : “ Neither worship as do the Jews, for they 
fancy themselves alone to know God, yet know him 
not, for they worship angels and archangels, the 
month and the moon;? and, unless the moon ap- 
pear, they will not hold the Sabbath which is called 
first, nor observe the new-moon, nor Unleayened 
Bread, nor the Feast [of Tabernacles] nor any 
great day.” Then comes, as third element in the 
comparison, instead of Judaism in the pre-Christian — 
form, the presentation of Christianity as the true 
religion. “‘So that it is for you, finally, who shall 
have learned the holy and righteous ordinances 
which we deliver to you, to keep them, worshipping 
God in a new way by Christ.’”’ As to what followed, 


1 The Jewish calendar system, being the foundation of the 
priestly ritual (Gen. i. 14, Jubilees, passim), naturally led to com- 
parisons with heathen ritual systems which haye a similar basis, 
though with frank avowal of the astral character of the divinities 
worshiped. The Jews, however, classed the beings who govern 
the motions of sun, moon, and stars as “ angels and archangels ” 
(Enoch, passim). But worship of “‘ Month and Moon” is an unin- 
telligible accusation, unless the words Mnv) kal SeAnv@ are taken 
as proper names, — perhaps the ancient Phrygian divine pair, Men 
and Selene. See Ramsay, Galatians, p. 202, and Cities and Bish- 
oprics of Phrygia, ii. p. 626. 


FOUNDING OF THE GREEK CHURCHES 167 


Clement only tells us that Peter “ shows that the 
same God was the giver of Greek philosophy to the 
Greeks.” Another fragment, however, surviving 
elsewhere, goes on to declare: “As for all the 
things which any one of you hath done in igno- 
rance, not clearly knowing God, if, having come to 
full knowledge, he repent, all his sins shall be for- 
given him.” 

One might almost think the fragments of the 
Preaching of Peter were based on Acts xiv. 15— 
17, and xvii. 18-31. In reality this document 
simply holds in common with the group of early 
writings already cited, in common with Acts, in 
common with Paul himself in Rom. i. 16-ii. 16, and 
1 Thess. i. 9, 10, a stock predicatio of early Jewish 
monotheistic propaganda, so modified in Christian 
use as to make Judaism itself take second place 
in the comparison. Even the conception of God’s 
“ overlooking” the times of ignorance appears in 
Wisdom xi. 23.1 

Acts, therefore, in its description of preaching 
to the heathen at Lystra and Athens is true to Paul, 
but simply because Paul was true to the standard 
of even pre-Christian times. The Jewish Stoic who 


1 “Thou overlookest the sins of men to the end they may re- 
pent.’’ Cf. Rom. ii. 4, “ Or despisest thou the long-suffering and 
forbearance, not knowing that the goodness of God leadeth thee 
to repentance ?” t 


168 THE STORY OF ST. PAUL 


‘wrote the Wisdom of Solomon is Paul’s real 
teacher of missionary preaching, according to the 
joint testimony of Acts xvii. 22-31, and Rom. i. 
18-ii. 16. 

At Corinth, where Luke returns to his preoceu- 
pation with Paul’s relations to the synagogue, Acts 
has simply a repetition in dramatic form of the 
scene of xiii. 45-48 on the First Missionary Journey, 
where the Apostles “turn to the Gentiles.” Luke 
tells us, indeed, that Paul met in Corinth his subse- 
quent helpers, Aquila and Prisca, recently expelled 
from Rome by the decree of Claudius against Jews 
(dated by Orosius in 49 A. D.), and that he re- 
mained there at work among the Gentiles for eigh- 

_teen months, Silas and Timothy meantime having 
come down from Macedonia ; but the only incident 
he has to relate of these whole eighteen months is 
the characteristic one referred to. These eighteen 
months are the period of the founding of the church 
in Achaia, the consolidating of that in Macedonia, 
and above all of the great crisis through which Paul 
succeeded in preventing the Judaizers from filching 
from him his first great missionary field of Galatia ; 
But Luke has nothing to tell of all this. His inter- 
est is taken up by an unsuccessful attempt of the 
Jews to denounce Paul before Gallio, brother of 
Seneca, from whom we have had so much oceasion to 
quote. Apparently they brought suit under the law 


FOUNDING OF THE GREEK CHURCHES 169 


forbidding the propagation of unauthorized faiths, so 
that it became necessary to show that Christianity 
was so different from Judaism as not to be included 
under the sanction Rome gave to it. Gallio, how- 
ever, very easily perceived that it was simply a 
matter of the perpetual synagogue quarreling about 
words and (Messianic) names and the obligation 
of the Law; the sort of ‘quarrels which, according 
to Suetonius, had led to the recent Claudian decree. 
Gallio, accordingly, contemptuously dismissed the 
ease. Luke says he even permitted the crowd, who 
had no liking for Jews, to take the archi-synagogus, 
whose prosecution of the case had proved so unsuc- 
cessful, and beat him before the judgment-seat. 
Luke calls the man Sosthenes, not at all a common 
name. Hither, then, there is some confusion,! or the 
beating must have led to a very remarkable and 
unexpected change of heart; for in Paul’s letter 
to the Corinthians written two or three years later, 
it is “ Paul, an Apostle of Jesus Christ, and Sos- 
thenes our brother”! 

All this as to Paul’s relations to the synagogue 
in Corinth is unquestionably interesting, — doubly 
so, since the American excavators, three years ago, 
turned up the marble lintel of a door with the rude 

1 Crispus, the one Corinthian convert whom Paul and Luke men- 


tion in common, is said in Acts xviii. 8 to have been the ruler of the 
synagogue. This may partly account for the confusion in v. 17. 


170 THE STORY OF ST. PAUL 


inscription which designated the place as the “ Syn- 
agogue of the Hebrews.” Moreover, it is of supreme 
importance to get trustworthy dates such as the 
appointment of Gallio, which cannot have been 
earlier than 50 A. D., and was probably in 51, so 
that the eighteen months in Corinth may be dated 
as in 50-51; but when we turn to Paul’s letters, 
these matters of the synagogue fall utterly below 
the horizon. The real interests appear, and Gallio 
and Jews alike are wholly forgotten. 

By almost universal admission it is here at Cor- 
inth that the series of Pauline letters begins, the 
only question being as to the priority of Galatians 
or the Thessalonian correspondence, In either case 
it is probably a question of only a few months, or 
even of weeks. In the letters we hear of Athens, 
but only that Paul had come there with Timothy, 
whom he sent back to Macedonia, but he seems to 
have left the city for Corinth before Timothy’s 
return. Results, then, were probably as meagre as 
Luke reports, for Paul reached Corinth in great 
discouragement, and was with them “in weakness, 
and in fear, and in much trembling, and his speech 
and preaching were not in persuasive words of 


” 


wisdom.” | Whether through adverse experience at 
Athens, or otherwise, he had determined to eschew 
philosophizing, and to know nothing among them 


but the simple story of the cross. In reality this 


FOUNDING OF THE GREEK CHURCHES 171 


proved the one effective thing. The story of a dy- 
ing Redeemer brought the “demonstration of the 
Spirit and of power,” tongues, prophecies, mighty 
works. No church surpassed this of Corinth in 
spiritual gifts. Once more Paul’s extremity had 
been God’s opportunity. ‘God chose the weak 
things of the world to put to shame the things that 
are strong,’ so that out’ of the motley company 
which gathered about the missionaries, few rich, 
few noble, many mere slaves and outcasts, there 
grew up the most flourishing of all Paul’s founda- 
tions hitherto. Acts xviii. 9, 10, tells us that the 
beginning of this was one of those experiences of 
Paul which he refers to as “ visions and revelations 
of the Lord,” and we may well believe it. They 
seem to have marked the reaction of his indomi- 
table faith in periods of his profoundest dejection. 
There was indeed ground enough for dejection. 
If the reasoning of Zahn, the greatest of German 
conservative scholars, is to be trusted, it was shortly 
after Paul’s arrival in Corinth with his new-found 
friends Aquila and Prisca, but before Timothy and 
Silas had returned from Macedonia, that Paul had 
news of the most disquieting sort from Galatia, 
the home of Timothy. In 1 Thess. i. 8, 9, we learn 
that the story of Paul’s missionary activity in 
Macedonia had spread in advance of him to Achaia, 
and, as he says, still further beyond. Nor was this 


172 THE STORY OF ST. PAUL 


all. The report of this report had come back to 
Paul. He can hardly mean from Rome, with which 
Aquila and Prisca were doubtless in correspond- 
ence. It is much more probable that it was from 
Galatia, whither Timothy had surely reported home 
the course of events, that Paul now received back 
the echo of his own doings across the Adgean, over 
the much-traveled route from Ephesus to Corinth. 
With the echo came also the report of what his 
enemies were doing: Not the Gentile slanderers 
and persecutors in Thessalonica, with whom he 
deals briefly in 1 Thessalonians, passing quickly to 
the internal conditions which specially required his 
attention, but Christian fellow countrymen of those 
Jews of whom he speaks so bitterly in 1 Thess. ii. 
15,16. Taking advantage of Paul’s absence,! the 
‘false brethren” had cut in upon his rear, follow- 
ing up their success at Antioch by an endeavor to 
win away from him his Galatian churches. They 
could not, of course, deny the Pillar Apostles’ re- 
ception of Titus the uncircumcised, and therefore 
could not insist, as formerly, on circumcision as an 
absolute condition of salvation, but only as a coun- 
sel of perfection. The Galatians having begun in 
the Spirit should be ‘‘ made perfect” in the flesh. 
It was in fact a different gospel from Paul’s which 
they preached to his converts, even representing to 
1 Gal. iv. 18. 


j FOUNDING OF THE GREEK CHURCHES 173 


them that Paul himself was no real Apostle, that 
he took his knowledge of Christ at second hand, 
and supplemented what little he had learned out of 
his own lax and free-thinking speculations. Base 
as were their libels, they made no small headway. 
Paul tells the Galatians frankly that he despairs of 
them. They were already observing Sabbaths, new 
moons, feasts, and all the Jewish sacred calendar. 
They had not yet submitted to circumcision; but 
in recognizing the literal seed of Abraham as the 
true heirs of the Messianic promise, they had con- 
ceded the principle. It remained only that they 
should accept the logical conclusion. They would 
then have cut themselves off from Christ and put 
themselves back in a bondage but little better than 
the heathenism from which Paul had rescued them. 

We must see how Paul met the assault upon his 
apostleship and his gospel when we proceed to study 
his letters. At present we must leave his corre- 
spondence with Thessalonica and Galatia, and ac- 
company him, as with Aquila and Prisca he takes 
leave of Corinth, crosses the Agean to Ephesus, 
where he leaves Aquila and Prisca, and reémbarks, 
so Luke tells us, for Antioch, having in the mean 
time received an urgent request from the Jews! in 
Ephesus to abide with them. 


1 Luke, in accordance with his invariable rule, makes Paul 
present the Gospel first to the Jews in the synagogue, so that the 


174 THE STORY OF ST. PAUL — 


Why, then, should Paul defer it, since we know 
that Asia had been his first objective, and insist first 
on returning to Antioch? Perhaps for the same rea- 
son that he persisted at the risk of his life in going 
to Jerusalem before he would visit Rome, the still 
more ardently desired goal of his missionary effort. 
At any rate, both these great Gentile centres were 
already occupied by Christian churches before 
Paul’s arrival, and as he takes great pains to ex- 
plain to the Romans, he always scrupulously avoids 
intrusion on another man’s foundation. Acts tells 
us nothing of whom Paul saw in Antioch, nor what 
his purpose was in going, only that he spent some 
time there, and afterward returned to Ephesus 
over land, “stablishing the churches of Galatia 
and Phrygia in order.” We can only draw more or 
less probable inferences ; but it is a fact that Paul 
for three years made Ephesus his headquarters, 
and that in the letters written thence not long after 
to Corinth he speaks of his arrangements in Gala- 
tia for the great contribution that he intends to 
send, or carry, to Jerusalem, says that his work 
invitation is made to appear — very improbably — to be from the 
synagogue. We know, however from the subsequent story that 
there was already a Christian community in Ephesus, and it will 
therefore be this which urged Paul to remain. In Rom. xvi., 
among the Ephesian Christians saluted are several of Jewish birth, 
of whom two are expressly said to have been in Christ before Paul 


himself. Compare Luke’s similar ignoring of the pre-Pauline 
church in Rome, Acts xxviii. 


FOUNDING OF THE GREEK CHURCHES 175 


in Ephesus is very prosperous, though “there are 
many adversaries,” and finally couples his own 
name again first with that of the Apostles, the 
brethren of the Lord, and Cephas, then with that 
of Barnabas, as controlled by the same principles. 
All this at least suggests a more hopeful prospect 
of healing the breach. 

Paul, however, was by no means done with 
the Judaizers. The churches of Macedonia seem 
to have been beyond their reach, but all along 
the great southern route to Rome from Antioch 
through South Galatia, Ephesus, and Corinth they 
zealously followed on his track, endeavoring by 
every means, even the basest slander, to undermine 
his authority, make proselytes of his converts, and 
deny his gospel. During this period of Paul’s work 
in Proconsular Asia, Corinth became the focus of 
their activity, and, as we shall see from our study 
of the Corinthian correspondence, gave more en- 
couragement to their design of ousting Paul than 
Galatia itself. Paul was compelled to write at least 
four letters, to/send both his most trusted lieuten- 
ants, and at last to come himself to the rescue, or 
this important church would have deserted. All 
this, however, is passed over in absolute silence by 
Luke (another example of “ reticence”), so that 
the appropriate place for us to consider it is in 
connection with the correspondence. 


176 THE STORY OF ST. PAUL 


There is more to be learned from Acts concern- 
ing a new complication that now for the first time 
appears in Ephesus and Corinth, but which was 
destined to make as great drafts upon the genius 
of Paul in defense of his gospel as the Judaizing 
heresy itself, though from the opposite quarter. 

The first great conflict of the new faith had been 
a war of independence, to emancipate the Gospel 
from the swathing-bands of Judaistic legalism. Its 
watchword was “ Justification by faith without the 
works of the Law.” Paul was the champion who 
achieved its victory. The second great conflict had 
only its beginnings within the lifetime of Paul, 
and in fact rested very largely on Pauline teach- 
ings., For while in its earliest forms the principal 
heresiarchs were of Jewish race (Simon Magus 
and Menander Samaritans, Cerinthus of Ephesus 
a Jew), it was essentially Hellenistic in type and 
Alexandrian in derivation. I refer to Gnosticism, 
a title which covers an immense variety of sects, 
extending from even pre-Christian times through- 
out the second century, and from Jewish to the 
most intensely anti-Jewish forms. 

All Gnostics, as the word itself suggests, from 
Philo down, are in their own view philosophers, 
or at least theosophists. All are eclecties, bor- 
rowing from this system of thought and that, more 
or less crudely understood, the elements of a new 


FOUNDING OF THE GREEK CHURCHES 177 


universal religion. The one point which all have 
in common is their dualism; the conviction that 
matter is essentially evil. Their common watch- 
word was, Emancipation of the spirit from fleshly 
existence, which made Paulinism seem a kindred 
doctrine. The spirit of redeeming love in God 
and man played, however, a smaller réle than 
enlightenment and speculative thought in their 
system. If they favored Indian philosophy, they 
accounted for material existence by the imperfect 
knowledge of the Creator (Demiurge); if the 
Persian type, by the intervention of an actively 
evil power. Sometimes they were extreme ascet- 
ies, seeking thus to free spirit from the toils of 
matter, sometimes utter libertines, declaring that 
the flesh and its passions had no relation to the 
spirit, whose deliverance is accomplished only by 
enlightenment (gnosis). Sometimes they were 
really profound and acute philosophers, like Valen- 
tinus; sometimes the mere Blavatskys and Diss 
Debars of the age. Such were Elymas the mage at 
the court of Sergius Paulus, and Simon the mage 
at Samaria. Such were now at Ephesus the seven 
sons of the Jew Sceva, who claimed to be a chief 
priest. All belong to the class designated by Luke 
as “strolling Jews, exorcists.’ The Epistle to 
Titus describes them as “vain talkers and deceiv- 


” 


ers,’ who in Crete were “overthrowing whole 


178 THE STORY OF ST. PAUL 


households, teaching things which they ought not,” 
“Jewish fables” and “endless genealogies,” men 
disreputable and impure. It also adds that the 
worst of the whole class were “those of the cir- 
cumcision.” 

Modern discovery is just beginning to make us 
acquainted with this type of mongrel, debased 
Judaism, the type that calls forth the scorn and 
hatred of Horace, Juvenal, Martial, and Tacitus. 
We have now whole libraries of the so-called magic 
papyri, or “‘ Ephesian letters” as they were called, 
from the seat of principal manufacture. Their in- 
cantations and abracadabra are made up largely of 
the formule of the Jewish Law, and such terms as 
“ Jehovah Sabaoth,” « Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob ” 
recur, with all the angelology and demonology of 
current Jewish superstition. Hellenistic Judaism 
and Christianity alike were infested with this pest 
all through the latter part of the first and the 
whole of the second century,! and Paul in Ephesus 
had made his headquarters in its very seat and 
hotbed. 


1 For further data on Jewish and early Christian magie see 
Deissmann, Bible Studies, [V. (An Epigraphie Memorial of the 
LXX.) and VI. (Greek Transcriptions of the Tetragrammaton), 
noting especially the quotation (p. 336) from the letter of Hadrian 
to Servianus, “in which it is said that the Samaritans in Egypt, 
together with the Jews and Christians dwelling in that country, 
are all astrologers, haruspices, and quacksalvers.”’ 


FOUNDING OF THE GREEK CHURCHES 179 


Neither did he now shrink any longer from 
applying all the powers of a naturally philosophic 
and well-trained mind to the problem. First Co- 
rinthians begins with a declaration of Paul’s ability, 
had he chosen, to bring to bear a higher philosophy 
at Corinth; for Corinth, too, had caught the infec- 
tion from Ephesus, apparently through Apollos, 
who himself had come to Ephesus from Alexandria 
equipped with its Philonic subtleties. In Asia, at 
least, Paul fought fire with fire. Luke, after his 
stereotyped account of separation from the syna- 
gogue, xix. 8, 9, tells us that his preaching in Ephe- 
sus consisted of “reasoning daily for two whole 
years in the school of one Tyrannus.” The very 
place is significant; still more so the statement of 
results. I do not refer to the relic miracles of the 
healing handkerchiefs and napkins taken from 
Paul’s body, which only betray the element of Jew- 
ish legendary accretion, traceable even from the 
language in this chapter; I refer to the bonfire 
with which the conclusion of Paul’s ministry was 
celebrated. ‘ Many of those who practised magic,” 
says Luke, brought their books together, and burned 
them in the sight of all, and they counted the price 
of them and found it $50,000.41 


1 The valuation must be understood as representing their worth 
in the eyes of those who believed in them. If inventoried at cost, 
the figures would hardly be accepted by fire-insurance adjusters. 


180 THE STORY OF ST. PAUL 


Of the community of disciples of John the Bap- 
tist, from whom Aquila and Prisca won over, dur- 
ing Paul’s absence at Antioch, the cultured Alex- 
andrian Apollos, sending him soon after to Corinth, 
I can only stop to say that all we know of the 
sect, which spread all the way to the Persian Gulf 
and maintained its existence even down to the nine- 
teenth century, indicates that it was of a strongly 
Gnostic type; for Gnosticism fastened upon the 
leaderless Johannine movement with even greater 
ease and avidity than upon Christianity. Apollos, 
however, though the speculative, Alexandrian type 
of his preaching in Corinth had some unfortunate 
results, was in warm sympathy with Paul, and 
Paul with him; so that we must not imagine him 
as tainted with Gnostic error. 

Finally, as to Paul’s fighting with beasts in 
Ephesus (1 Cor. xv. 32), which McGiffert with 
other first-rate authorities understands to mean 
literal ‘“‘combat with wild beasts in the arena,” 
we can only say, either Luke has told us nothing 
whatever about it; or else, if it be the riot in the 
theatre of Acts xix. 23-41,— at which, however, 
Paul, according to Luke, was not himself present, 
—it is placed too near his final departure, for 
Paul alludes to it, in 1 Corinthians, a year before 
his departure. We only know from 2 Cor. i. 8— 
11 that Paul’s final departure from Ephesus was 


FOUNDING OF THE GREEK CHURCHES 181 


indeed at such imminent risk of his life, that he 
and his companions, felt that the sentence of death 
had been pronounced, and that they owed their 
escape to “God that raiseth the dead.” Aquila 
and Prisca, however, have a generous share in his 
gratitude, for in a brief letter of commendation, 
which in our canon is attached to Romans, but was 
originally a commendation of the deaconess Phebe 
from Corinth to the church in Ephesus, Paul 
sends greeting to many Ephesian friends, includ- 
ing “Prisca and Aquila, who for my life laid 
down their own necks,” and Andronicus? and 
Junia, his fellow countrymen, who had shared his 
“‘ imprisonment.” 

Clearly, Luke gives anything but a complete ac- 
count of Paul’s work in Ephesus. Nevertheless, in 
the following chapter the Diary begins again, after 
a brief statement of Paul’s journey of confirmation 
from Ephesus through Macedonia to Achaia, and of 
his return, after wintering in Corinth, by the same 
route, instead of by sea to Jerusalem, on account 
of another plot against his life from the Jews. 


1 Rom. xvi. 

2 Andronicus may perhaps be added to the list of names which 
indicate an Ephesian address for this letter, Rom. xvi. The only 
Andronicus of early Christian tradition is he of the Acts of John 
(A. D. 160-170), located in Ephesus in the time of the Apostles. 
Ten of the names indicate some locality in Paul’s Grecian mission- 
field, three (with Andronicus four) suggest specifically Ephesus. 


ey one) ll "a 


182 THE STORY OF ST. PAUL 


This dry statement is lighted up with gleams of 
vivid dramatic interest as we read our 2 Cor., 
written from Macedonia when Paul had barely es- 
caped with his life from Ephesus. As,we learn 
from the Epistles, he was even then more than half 
afraid that if he reached Corinth at all, it would 
be only to find the church completely alienated 
from him, and the door shut in his face; but this 
last and most critical period of all Paul’s mission- 
ary career can be considered only in connection 
with the correspondence, for the usual reason, — the 
“‘ reticence” of Acts, which regards the Judaizers 
as suppressed after the Jerusalem decrees. 

It remains for us, therefore, only to recall the 
touching picture of the final journey from Cor- 
inth, now at last won back to its allegiance. It is 
drawn in the main by one of the great company of 
delegates who accompanied Paul, two from each of 
his great provincial churches. Enlargement upon 
the Diary would be “ gilding refined gold.” Such 
scenes as the partings at Philippi and Troas, at 
Miletus, and above all, on the beach at Tyre (Acts 
xxi. 5), speak from the very life; for there was no 
concealment of the expectation that Paul was going 
to his doom. Prophet after prophet expressed in 
word and symbol the voice of the Spirit that 
“bonds and imprisonment awaited him;” but 
Paul no longer turned back even at the voice of 


FOUNDING OF THE GREEK CHURCHES 183 


the Spirit, when it gave only warnings of his own 
fate. Indeed, the reported address at Miletus re- 
presents, not so much what Paul would most wish 
to say, if we can judge by his letters to his Ephe- 
sian helpers, as what the historian wished to say; 
for its motive, to make clear that the blood of 
the unbelieving Jews was on their own heads, is 
more Lucan than Pauline. Yet it does embody in 
the allusions to the appointed bishops (xx. 28, if 
there were “ bishops” in 55 A. D.), and to Paul’s 
working with his own hands (xx. 34), traits un- 
known to the Lucan story; so that we seem to 
have an intermediate stage between the Diary and 
the final compiler. The few golden pages of Acts 
xx. 0-17, xxi. 1-18, must speak for themselves. 
The great question that concerns us relates to the 
understanding of Paul’s life. Why was he so bent 
upon this almost inevitably fatal journey? What 
was the meaning of this great delegation from all 
* the churches of the Gentiles’ to Jerusalem, Paul 
among their number? Why had he for years past 
been ordaining in all his churches, from Galatia to 
Macedonia and Achaia, gatherings of money on the 
first day of the week? Why does he write to the 
Corinthians repeatedly about the collections and 
the delegates who are to go, either alone, or, ac- 
cording to the subsequent plan, with Paul to Jeru- 
salem? Why does he finally, on the eve of setting 


184 THE STORY OF ST. PAUL 


out, send a letter to Rome, assuring them of his 
prayers and yearning hopes to see them, but de- 
claring that he must first go to Jerusalem, to per- 
form a ministration to the saints? “For it hath 
been the good pleasure of Macedonia and Achaia 
to make a certain contribution for the poor among 
the saints that are at Jerusalem.” What, finally, 
is the meaning of that touching figure by which 
Paul describes his own part in the great undertak- 
ing? “The grace was given me of God that I 
should be a ministrant priest of Christ Jesus, offi- 
ciating in the sacrifice of the Gentiles, that it 
might prove acceptable, as being sanctified by the 
Holy Spirit.” 

The secret is not hard to guess, if we look away 
from Acts, which has only silence on this whole un- 
dertaking,! to the series of letters from Galatians 
to Romans. 

This was Paul’s olive-branch. This was the goal 
toward which he had striven these seven years of 
danger and toil and devotion incomparable. While 
Jewish Christians were plotting against his churches, 
and Jews against his life, Paul was laboring and 
toiling, living on the work of his own hands that 


1 The only reference in Acts is in the chance allusion of Paul’s 
speech before Felix (another instance in which the Pauline 
speeches seem to stand a stage nearer the facts than Luke), “I 
come to bring alms to my nation,’’ Acts xxiv. 17. 


.— 


FOUNDING OF THE GREEK CHURCHES 185 


he might not be chargeable to any, determined to 
prove at last, even at the risk of his life, to his 
fellow countrymen and fellow believers in Jerusa- 
lem, that he had not forgotten or been false to that 
first warm-hearted understanding with the Pillar 
Apostles, when they had asked but this one thing, 
that he would “ remember the poor.” 

Would it be acceptable to the saints? Would the 
terrible breach be healed? Would the Apostles 
and Elders receive him as on that first occasion, 
almost ten years before? Or would the “ bonds, 
the imprisonment,” the death he foresaw, be all 
incurred in vain? We must leave Paul where his 
letter leaves the church he is yearning to see in 
Rome. “Now I beseech you, brethren, by our 
Lord Jesus Christ and by the love of the Spirit, 
that ye wrestle together with me in your prayers to 
God for me: that I may be delivered from them 
that are unbelieving in Judea, and that my min- 
istration which I have for Jerusalem may be ac- 
ceptable to the saints; that I may come unto you 
in joy through the will of God, and together with 
you may find a breathing space. May the God of 
peace be with you all, Amen.” 


LECTURE VI 
THE AMBASSADOR IN CHAINS 


Tue Diary of Paul’s nameless companion, after 
bringing him from Philippi to Jerusalem, breaks 
off again at the point where Paul and the whole 
delegation together “ went in unto James ; and all 
the Elders were present.” Apparently none of the 
Twelve were in Jerusalem. If it told more, the 
author of Acts has not included it. 

I am afraid it is somewhat disappointing to pass 
from the Epistle to the Romans, where interest is 
centred on the great internal problem of church 
unity, and keyed up to the highest point, as we 
realize that Paul, though face to face with death, is 
reaching the goal of seven years of superhuman 
effort, to another writer, who is systematically 
“reticent” on the whole subject of internal discord 
in the Church ; but so our method requires. Unfor- 
tunately, Luke is not always interested in what 
interests us. In Galatia, at Thessalonica, at Corinth, 
at Ephesus, everywhere he rigidly confines his 
attention to Paul’s relations with the Synagogue 
on the one side and the Roman authorities on the 
other. Internal questions are ignored. We have 


THE AMBASSADOR IN CHAINS 187 


again in the Lucan story of this momentous visit 
to Jerusalem, on the large scale, simply what we had 
in the account of Corinth? on the small. One 
quarter of the entire Book of Acts is occupied 
with this story of Paul’s ill-treatment by the Jews 
in Jerusalem, and his successful appeal to Roman 
protection, which was the providential occasion of 
his being brought to Rome. In all this the author 
has not found room for one word on the subject 
which to Paul was more than an issue of life 
and death, an issue in comparison with which he 
* counted not his life dear unto him,” the issue of 
the union or disunion of the Church. Was the gift 
of the Gentile churches “ acceptable to the saints ” 
‘the issue for which Paul begged the Christians 
in Rome to wrestle together with him in prayer to 
God ? Or was it not? At the very point where Paul 
and his fellow delegates from these churches enter 
the presence of “ James and all the Elders” the 
curtain drops. If the Diary reported the result, its 
account has been superseded by the long chapters 
dealing with Paul’s delivering up to the Gentiles, 
the plots of the Jews, and Paul’s speeches of defense 
‘* before governors and kings.” Instead of being told 
the outcome of that momentous crisis which the 
Epistles have taught us was the supreme interest 
to Paul’s mind, the healing of the great schism be- 
' Acts xviii. 1-17. 


0 ay 
188 THE STORY OF ST. PAUL 


tween Gentile and Jewish Christianity, the reader 
of Acts finds absolutely no allusion to the matter, 
except a casual, and as it were accidental, reference 
in Paul’s speech before Felix, — “ After many years 
I came to bring alms to my nation and offerings ;” 
implying that whatever Paul brought had only the 
significance of the alms and offerings customary 
with the every-day Jewish pilgrim to the temple. 
The reader who comes anxiously inquiring, “ Well, 
what of the great issue for which Paul was risking 
all?” is, as it were, taken confidentially by the arm, 
with an “ Oh, come now, never mind those little 
misunderstandings of the past about the relations 
of Jews and Gentiles in the Church. You know I 
told you how the Apostles and Elders settled all 
that by the Jerusalem decrees.” 

That is simply the nature of the material, which 
each reader must use in his own way. If the object 
is to establish “the credibility of Luke,” one may 
~ be content to write a Shakespearian epitaph over 
the sepulchre of this dead controversy, and know 
nothing of what the apologist does not volunteer 
to tell; but if it be to understand the true story of 
Paul, on its inward as well as outward side, one will 
be more disposed to accept the tacit invitation of the 
New Testament to comparison. The caution must 
be against an impatience born of the assumption 
that it was Luke’s duty to write the kind of history © 


THE AMBASSADOR IN CHAINS 189 


we would have him. Having been fully warned that 
his book was written for the purpose of confirming 
Theophilus in “the things wherein he had been 
catechized,” it is our business to let our guide take 
his own course, simply remembering his interests. 
According to Luke, then, Paul simply reported 
his work, and James and the Elders glorified God. 
However, James is somehow aware of certain slan- 
ders concerning Paul which declare that he teaches 
the Jews which are among the Gentiles to forsake 
Moses. There is no explanation of how so strange 
a slander should have obtained currency, and even 
be generally believed by the Judzan churches. 
However, James proposes that Paul should pay the 
costs of sacrifice for four members of the Jerusa- 
lem church who were to be discharged from a Nazi- 
rite vow, and Paul offers no objection, but dutifully 
does as he is bid. Incidentally James states, — ap- 
parently to refresh Paul’s memory,*— “ But as 
touching the Gentiles which have believed, we 
wrote, giving judgment that they should keep them- 
selves from things sacrificed to idols, and from 
blood, and from what is strangled, and from fornica- 
1 Or is it that now for the first time Paul is given opportunity 
to express his mind on this proposed application of the agree- 
ment? Certainly Acts xxiii. 25 comes in strangely here if the . 
course of events was as described in Acts xv. It seems to pre- 


_ suppose rather such a history as we have deduced from Gal. 
u. 12. 


190 THE STORY OF ST. PAUL 


tion.” ! As for the delegates of the Gentile churches, 
they suddenly and permanently disappear. No one 
knows what becomes of them, nor of the great 
fund collected for these many months through all 
Galatia and Asia, Macedonia and Achaia. The 
author of the slanderous Simon Magus legend? will 
have it that Peter roundly denounced the gift as an 
attempt at bribery, telling Paul, “ Thy silver per- 
ish with thee, because thou hast thought to obtain 
the gift of God with money. Thou hast neither 
part nor lot in this word [of the Gospel], for thy 
heart is not right before God .. . for I foresee 
that thou wilt become a gall-root of bitterness and 
a bond [%. e. organizer] of iniquity.” 8 

1 Thus Paul has always done exactly as directed from Jerusa- 
lem. It would seem as if here more of the real historical situation 
were permitted to shine through from the underlying Diary than 
the historian really intended. 

2 On this legend in its various forms see the articles s. v., in 
Encycl. Bibl. and Hastings’ Bible Dictionary. 

3 The representation of Simon of Gitta, in Acts viii. 18-24, is 
a mere caricature. The man himself was certainly a theosophist 
of great repute in his day, and even a whole century later his fel- 
low countryman, Justin Martyr, could testify that all the Samari- 
tans were infatuated with his doctrines. He is in fact regarded 
by all the fathers as the fons et origo of Gnosticism. But how- 
ever large a part mere thaumaturgy may have played in his prac- 
tice, this was no such “ Simple Simon” as Acts represents, nor can 
he ever have taken this humble attitude toward the Apostles. 
These traits, and perhaps those of the Elymas Bar-Jesus episode 


of Acts xiii. 6-11, are borrowed from a special type of the legend 
of which but a few traces survive, principally in the Clementine 





THE AMBASSADOR IN CHAINS 191 


Doubtless that represents exactly the attitude 
the “false brethren ” would have liked to see as- 
sumed by “ James and the Elders ;” but it is very 
far from probable that they did assume it. Paul’s 
subsequent letters are some of them disputed, prin- 
cipally that which has most to say of the glorious 
unity of the Church, founded on “the Apostles 
and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the chief 
corner stone,” and about the “slaying of the en- 
mity,” and the “ breaking down of the middle wall 
of partition between Jew and Gentile.” In none 
of them is there any direct allusion to the out- 
come of this great effort of true Christian diplo- 
macy; but in all of them there is a new tone of 
serene cheerfulness on the point that had been so 
critically sensitive,! and a turning to new problems 
with high confidence and courage. My own convic- 
tion 2 is strong that Ephesians also is a genuine let- 
ter of Paul, written some three years after these 
events; and if Ephesians, with its sublime pean 
of thanksgiving for the unity of the Church, be 


Homilies. In this Jewish-Christian form of the legend, Simon 
Magus is clothed with the attributes of Paul, to fall discomfited 
before the logic and miraculous power of Peter. Of course the 
author of our Book of Acts has no idea that the discomfitures 
of Simon Magus and Elymas as he relates them were originally 
intended to set forth the discomfiture of Paul. 

1 #. g. Phil. i. 18. 

2 See Bacon, Introd. to New Test. 


192 THE STORY OF ST. PAUL 


genuine, there is no more room for doubt as to the 
way in which the balance inclined; but Philip- 
pians alone, the most universally acknowledged of 
the later Epistles, is enough to show that Paul was 
not wholly unsuccessful. 

Did the Jerusalem church accept the gift? — 
The question may be propounded as a Bible-class 
puzzle of the first grade: What became of the 
money Paul took to Jerusalem? It would be 
pleasant to believe that those for whom it was — 
intended consented to accept it unconditionally. If 
so, then Paul was successful indeed. After that, 
the slanders and innuendoes and hostility, against 
which he had striven all these years, must at least 
have been wholly silenced, if they did not give 
place to humble retractations and apology. Unfor- 
tunately, such does not seem to have been the case. 
Before any very effective action could be taken, 
Paul had been arrested, transferred to the Roman 
governor’s residence in Czsarea, and was in con- 
finement, though his friends were permitted access 
to him. As to the great fund Acts tells us nothing. 
Paul tells us nothing. Paul’s Jewish-Christian ene- 
mies only repudiate the idea that the true Apostles 
would touch it. We should like to think that it was 
simply and gratefully accepted by the Jerusalem 
church; but there is at least enough doubt about 
this to justify the suggestion of another possibility. 


THE AMBASSADOR IN CHAINS 193 


Professor Ramsay points out that this visit to_ 
Jerusalem seems to be coincident with a change in 
Paul’s financial conditions. He no longer appears 
so pinched with actual want. He travels to Rome 
almost in state. At least, he is allowed a compan- 
ion, whose expenses certainly were not paid from 
the imperial exchequer,! and when he arrives in 


1 Have we here, possibly, a clue to the origin of the Diary ? 
How should such an intinerary come to be in the hands of the 
Church as a semi-public document? Why should it have its 
peculiar character of an itinerary, varied only with such inci- 
dents as would be of special interest to supporters of Pauline 
missions ? Why, most of all, should it cover just those portions 
of Paul’s career in which we have reason to know he must haye 
had assistance by contributions from churches already founded, 
since Paul’s own resources cannot possibly have paid the expense 
of these long sea voyages for himself and his companions? All 
these questions are fully answered, if the primary purpose of the 
Diary was to serve as a report to contributing Pauline churches, 
a matter on which Paul had reason to be scrupulously exact, 
since misappropriation of such funds was one of the slanders cir- 
culated against him (2 Cor. xii. 14-18). If this be so, then the 
opportune arrival of the new-comer in Troas explains how the 
discouraged travelers are able to reach the larger field ; also why, 
at the conclusion of this campaign, Paul finds it so imperative to 
report back to Antioch (Acts xviii. 22), whence we may perhaps 
suppose the contributions to have come. Paul himself informs 
us that his missionary party had a burser or treasurer, as the 
Twelve had (Jn. xii. 6). In 2 Cor. viii. 18-21, we learn that he 
had been appointed by the churches, and that some time before. 
Paul speaks of him as “the brother whose praise in the Gospel is 
spread through all the churches, and not only so, but who was 
also appointed by the churches to travel with us in the matter of 
this bounty which is administered by us for the glory of the Lord, 


194 THE STORY OF ST. PAUL 


Rome, he lives in his own hired house. Moreover, 
he is treated with more deference than we should 
expect by the Roman officers who have him in cus- 
tody. Most significant of all, Felix, whose scent 
for money was the keenest of his servile faculties, 
is convinced that the friends of this prisoner Paul 
are (in thieves’ parlance) “ good for” a consider- 
able bribe. Professor Ramsay suggests that Paul 
on becoming a Christian had suffered the loss of 
his estates, but that the family, represented at this 
visit by the “sister’s son” who made known to 
Paul the plot against his life, had become recon- 
ciled to him, and restored him his property. All 
this is conceivable ; but some disposition had also 
to be made of a very considerable sum which we 
know to have been brought to Jerusalem by Paul’s 
friends. What did they do with it? Unless they 
really were successful in securing its acceptance 


and in accordance with our own forwardness (for our precautions 
are taken to this end, that no man may impugn us regarding this 
munificence which we administer; for our concern is for what 
is honorable not only in the sight of the Lord, but also in the 
sight of men).” Ancient tradition maintains that this was no 
other than Luke, the author of the Gospel and Acts. That this 
brother was indeed the author of the Diary seems to me a theory 
which largely meets the facts; but that his name was Luke, or 
that he was a physician, we have no indication in the text; and 
the idea that he was a Gentile seems scarcely tenable ; while that 
which makes him the author of the work Luke-Acts as it stands 
seems to me excluded. 


THE AMBASSADOR IN CHAINS 195 


by the Jerusalem church, they must surely have 
referred the question of its disposal back to the 
donors, and in view of what in the mean time 
had happened to Paul, we can easily infer what 
directions the Pauline churches would give. They 
did not bribe Felix; of that we have the evi- 
dence of Acts; but from this time on “ Paul the 
prisoner ” finds his sufferings alleviated, and the 
doors of opportunity opened for further activity 
in spreading the Gospel even from his dungeon, 
by repeated delegations and gifts from the Gentile 
churches. 

What, then, of the Jerusalem church and its 
myriads of “zealots for the Law”? Where were 
James and the Elders, when Paul, acting under 
their directions, had been seized in the temple, 
and was sorely in need of friends? Where were 
the “four brethren” who could testify to the 
falsity of the charge against him of having brought 
Greeks into the temple?! Were there no relations 

1 There is much to be said in favor of the argument of Lucht 
(Z. f. w. Theol., 1872), denying that this was the real charge 
against Paul. Its baselessness could of course have been proved 
at once by establishing the identity of the “four brethren.” 
Lucht regards it as a mere concrete application of the general 
charge that Paul “destroyed the Temple”’ by preaching “ access 
of Jew and Gentile in one Spirit unto the Father,” in defense of 
which gospel he had brought Titus to Jerusalem, and, as it were, 


forced the Jerusalem church to admit him to fellowship. Cer- 
tainly it was not on this charge that Paul appealed to Cesar, as 


196 THE STORY OF ST. PAUL 


whatever between Paul and the mother church all 
those two years of his captivity in Caesarea, when 
Felix permitted his friends to have access to him? 
In all this Luke preserves an absolutely unbroken 
silence. From the point where Paul leaves the 
presence of James and the Elders, one would not 
know from the narrative that there was another 
Christian in Palestine. 

It would not be just to argue from this silence 
that the Jerusalem church simply left Paul to his 
fate. James and the Elders at least will have done 
what they could for his rescue. There is, however, 
a Pauline fragment now incorporated in 2 Timothy, 
which, if not written at this time, at least cannot 
have been written at the same time as the rest of 
2 Timothy. For the rest of the letter is written 


Acts itself rhakes clear (xxv. 7-11, 25-27, xxvi. 31, 32), and his 
defenses are in fact simply pleas for the harmlessness of Chris- 
tianity (not the innocence of Paul), and its good right to be 
considered the religion of the Law and the Prophets. In the 
estimation of Luke, Christianity is practically acquitted in the 
person of Paul (xxvi. 31,32), the authorities taking precisely 
the view of Gallio. Only the jealous envy of the Jews trumps 
up baseless charges, which the Roman authorities at once see 
through. In reality, as we know from Tacitus and Pliny, Chris- 
tianity as such was not put on trial at this time. Paul’s case was 
treated individually, and his execution was not ‘‘for the Name ” 
nor “as a Christian.” The legality or illegality of Christianity as 
such remained unsettled for years after, and Paul’s ease was not 
made a precedent for either side, though it is the earnest effort of 
Luke to make it count in favor of Christianity. 


THE AMBASSADOR IN CHAINS 197 


but little later than Philippians, from Rome, later 
than the “ two years in his own hired house,” and 
in immediate prospect of martyrdom. This portion, 
however, interwoven in the last chapter (vv. 9, 11— 
18, 20, 21a), presupposes an entirely different 
situation. Paul has recently come from Corinth 
by way of Troas, where he left a cloak and some 
papyrus books and parchment rolls of the Old Tes- 
tament.’ These he wants to use, and hopes to get 
with the cloak before winter. Death, therefore, is 
not immediately impending. Moreover, his journey 
to the place where he now is -had included a stop 
at Miletus, where he left a companion, Trophimus, 
sick. Tychicus had also been with him, but Paul 
had sent him back to Ephesus, his native place. 
All these features presuppose exactly the journey 
which was described for us in the Diary, starting 
from Corinth (after Philippi) at Troas and Mile- 
tus. Paul’s companions, so far as referred to, 
are on that journey, with one exception. In Acts 
xxi. 29 (not part of the Diary), the charge that 
Paul had brought Greeks into the temple is ex- 


1 Papyrus was used for ordinary books; the much more expen- 
sive and durable parchment it was obligatory on scribes to use 
for the sacred writings. Some account thus for the Talmudic 
term for canonical “ defiling the hands,”’ the skins as dead animal 
matter being ceremonially unclean. Paul wants his books and 
his Bible. The “ cloak” may be the cover or case for the volumina 
or rolls. The word is ambiguous. 


198 THE STORY OF ST. PAUL 


plained by the parenthetical remark that the Jews 
had seen Trophimus in Jerusalem with Paul, and 
supposed that he had brought him into the temple, 
which would of course imply that he had not been 
left behind in Miletus. But the historicity of the 
verse has been assailed on independent grounds,}! 
and is connected with a wrong idea of the real 
charges against Paul; so that it alone can hardly 
outweigh the many points of coincidence indicat- 
ing that the fragment 2 Tim. iv. 9, 11-18, 20, 21 a, 
was written from Czsarea at this time ; for clearly 
the outlook is by no means so fateful as in Philip- 
pians and the rest of 2 Timothy. Paul has made a 
first defense, and with very encouraging results. He 
uses the same confident expression as in 2 Cor. 
i. 10, in speaking of the great deliverance he had 
then just experienced in Ephesus. His principal 
adversary also was Alexander the coppersmith, 
apparently the same Jew whom the Jews in the 
riot at Ephesus put forward in the theatre as their 
champion (Acts xix. 33, 34). Paul’s correspond- 
ent? is warned to look out for him as a dangerous 


1 See Lucht, loc. cit., Overbeck, and J. Weiss, Absicht und Char- 
akter der Apg. 1898, p. 39. 

2 There are difficulties in the way of supposing him to have 
been Timothy. Timothy might easily have returned to Ephesus 
from Jerusalem, even if his accompanying of Paul on this journey 
was not simply ‘‘ as far as Asia’ (best MSS. in Acts xx. 4). But 
would Timothy even then need information about Trophimus ? 


THE AMBASSADOR IN CHAINS 199 


man. So in Acts xsi. 27 and xxiv. 18, it is “ certain 
Jews from Asia” who stir up the tumult in the tem- 
ple and make the charges against Paul. Finally the 
letter declares, ‘“‘ The Lord stood by me and strength- 
ened me; that through me the message might be 
fully proclaimed, and that all the Gentiles might 
hear,” which is paralleled by Acts after its usual 
form? in xxiii. 11, “ And the night following [after 
his defense before the Sanhedrin], the Lord stood 
by him and said, Be of good cheer: for as thou 
hast testified concerning me at Jerusalem, so must 
thou bear witness also at Rome.” 

Accordingly it would seem at least a possibility 
that the silence of those years of imprisonment in 
Cesarea is not absolutely unbroken. And if the 
fragment really is of this date, the few words it has 
to say are sadly significant of Paul’s friendlessness 
among his kinsmen according to the flesh. “ At my 
first defense no one took my part, but all forsook 
me: may it not be laid to their account.” 

Nevertheless, we should probably be doing great 
injustice, at least to the leaders of the Jerusalem 
church, if we inferred from the mere silence of 
Luke regarding all Paul’s relations with the mother 
ehurch during this long period of his trials and 
imprisonment, that there was nothing at all to 
tell. We must account for it in the same way that 

1 Cf. Acts xviii. 9. 


200 THE STORY OF ST. PAUL 


we account for his uniform silence on matters of the 
inner relations of the Church so vital to Paul, and 
his volubility on the subject of the hostility of the 
Jews and the good right of Christianity, when per- 
mitted to make its defense before the authorities. 
As we are in search not so much of interesting 
reading, the romance and adventure of Paul’s life, 
as of that which sheds light upon the Epistles, we 
shall pass over lightly the riot in the temple and the 
speech which Luke represents him to have made to 
the mob from the stairs of the castle by permission 
of the Roman military tribune, who had just res- 
cued him. The scene is true to the life in all but 
the speech. Not that one cannot imagine a Paul 
having the nerve and courage to turn around the 
very instant he is lifted beyond the reach of the 
murderous mob and ask leave to address them. But 
it is difficult to imagine his fidus Achates, note-book 
in hand, ready on the spot to take down the very 
words he said. It is also difficult to imagine the 
mob now quietly listening in “a great silence,” 
even when Paul, completely ignoring the false 
charge for which we are told they were trying to 
kill him, proceeds simply to tell the story of his 
conversion, and how he received his commission 
from Jesus to preach to the Gentiles. In fact, we 
have already seen that this story, while less unhis- 
torical than Acts ix., is incompatible with Galatians 


THE. AMBASSADOR IN CHAINS 201 


in representing that Paul sought to begin his 
career in Jerusalem. 

We must also dismiss with still briefer consider- 
ation the second speech, wherein Paul on the mor- 
row addresses the Sanhedrin. His faithful reporter 
will scarcely have found it easy to gain admission 
here, even if his tablets were this time all ready, 
so that we need not trouble ourselves greatly with 
the question how Paul, an ex-member of the body, 
should not even be able to recognize the high priest, 
sitting in his robes of office, nor why, supposing 
Paul to have had no scruples about declaring him- 
self still a Pharisee, and that the question in debate 
was simply that of Pharisee against Sadducee on 
the possibility of resurrection, he should have been 
able so easily to effect the desired diversion in his 
favor. In short, the scene is ideal. The author 
holds that even in Judaism the better element, re- 
presented by Pharisees of the type of Gamaliel, is 
“not far from the kingdom of God.” The opposi- 
tion comes from the bitter jealousy of the Saddu- 
cean aristocracy, who have mercenary reasons for 
resisting what is really the fulfillment of the Law 
and the Prophets.1 He improves the occasion as 
he had done before in the speech of Gamaliel. 

Of the vision of the Lord the succeeding night, 


1 Cf. John xi. 48, Mt. xxvii. 18 = Mk. xv. 10; and see Acts iy. 
it, 2, v. 13, 26. 


202 THE STORY OF ST. PAUL 


in which Paul is encouraged by the assurance that 
he is to bear his witness similarly in Rome, we have 
already spoken. Its relation to Paul’s own state- 
ment (2 Tim. iv. 17) is analogous to the relation 
of the visible, tangible, operative angel of Peter’s 
deliverance to that of Peter’s devout utterance, 
Acts xii. 11. 

The plot to kill Paul is no doubt quite historical, 
in spite of the fact that it forms the stereotyped 
occasion of Paul’s leaving every city. Paul’s sister’s 
son is an agent through whom our informant may 
well have gotten his information. It is much more 
probable that some of the previous “plots of the 
Jews to kill him,” which occasion his departure 
from Jerusalem in ix. 29 and from Corinth in xx. 
3, to say nothing of the riots provoked by them 
against him in xiii. 50, xiv. 2, 5, 19, xvii. 5, 13, 
xviii. 12, xix. 33, are reflections of this, than that so 
graphic, circumstantial, and self-consistent a nar- 
rative, in which the church is conspicuous only by its 
absence, should be unhistorical. If there seems to 
be a disproportionate insistence in the book as a 
whole on the wi Jews as always sole authors 
of every disturbance,! we must remember that in 
the period when it was written the Jews were odi- 

1 The only exception is Philippi. It is significant that this 


should be just the one where we stand nearest the first-hand in- 
formant. 


THE AMBASSADOR IN CHAINS 203 


ously prominent in procuring the persecution of 
Christians. 

We must also admit that Luke probably did not 
have access to Claudius Lysias’ letter-press, nor 
the files of Felix’s correspondence, so that the let- 
ter of the former in Acts xxiii. 26-30 is more 
creditable to Luke’s literary ability? than to the 
fullness of his information. 

Also the contrasted speeches of Tertullus and 
Paul in Acts xxiv. 2-8 and 10—21 show equal skill, 
and we have already seen that the allusion to the 
fund Paul had brought seems to indicate a hand 
nearer the historical facts than Luke’s. But here, 
too, it is not supposable that Paul would have given 
so false an impression,’ to say nothing of the prac- 
tical disappearance of the real points at issue. Once 
more, the real plea is not Paul’s case before Felix, 
but the narrator is arguing the case of Christianity 
before the tribunal of the Flavian emperors. 

Tf we omit the speeches, nearly all the rest — 
the scenes, the characters, the whole story of Paul’s 


1 See, e. g., the part played by the Jews i: the martyrdom of 
Polycarp, Mart. Polyc. xiii. 1. 

2 There is a touch of Lucan humor in the phrase of verse 27, 
“having learned that he was a Roman,” where Lysias claims a 
credit for patriotic interest that does not belong to him. 

8 “T came to bring alms to my nation and offerings. . 
Believing all things which are according to the Law and which 
are written in the Prophets.” 


204 THE STORY OF ST. PAUL 


transfer from Jerusalem to Cesarea—is so true 
to life, we can have little doubt that the narrative 
of the Diary lies but slightly below the surface. It 
is when we come to the sudden gap of xxiv. 27, 
and two whole years of absolute silence, that we 
realize how completely at a loss the historian is, 
as soon as this document fails him. 

What became of the Diarist during these two 
years? We know not; but we may safely conjec- 
ture that he did not merely loiter about Cesarea, 
waiting for the occasional visits he might be allowed 
to make on the prisoner. Neither Paul nor he 
could allow the churches of the Gentiles to remain 
without information regarding Paul’s fate. It is 
true we have no letters from this imprisonment,} 
which argues, like the expression of Acts xxiv. 23 
in comparison with xxviii. 30, for much closer con- 
finement than in Rome. But, so far as permitted, 
Paul must have been engaged, here as there, with 
the care of all the churches, through his established 
system of correspondence. The company of dele- 
gates must have returned to their churches. Tro- 
phimus had been left at Miletus sick. It is the last 
we hear of him. Gaius, Secundus, and Sopater also 
disappear now from Paul’s story. Timothy, Tychi- 


1 The attempt of Meyer and a few others to attribute the 
group Ephesians-Colossians-Philemon, and eyen Philippians, to 
the Cesarean captivity is now practically abandoned. 


THE AMBASSADOR IN CHAINS 205 


cus, and Aristarchus we find again later in Rome, 
with Paul, or executing his commissions to the 
churches. Doubtless the Diarist, too, was not idle. 
Was he perhaps the bearer of that letter wherein 
Paul sent for his books and cloak, and asked that 
Mark, who in the neighborhood of Jerusalem would 
be specially serviceable, might be brought to be of 
service to him?! 

We must be content with silence. Not indeed 
because there was nothing to tell. On the contrary, 
these were years of tremendous importance for the 
Jerusalem church. They were days of increasing 
political agitation. The Egyptian whom Claudius 
Lysias had at first conceived to be his captive was 
only one of a multiplying succession of insurrec- 
tionists and pseudo-Messiahs, with whom Felix was 
partly in collusion for plunder, partly in conflict. 
The Zealot party had taken to secret assassination 
as a system for promoting their ends. The country 
was filled with increasing disorder, which made all 
sane minds ever clearer as to the justice of Jesus’ 
prediction of doom within forty years upon a nation 
that had rejected both the message of John and his 
own, and “knew not the things that belonged to 
its peace.” For the Jerusalem church the disorders 


1 The request is pleasantly significant of better relations be- 
tween the old-time friends Paul and Barnabas, the latter the 
uncle of Mark. 


206 THE STORY OF ST. PAUL 


culminated in a riot, wherein the saintly James met 
a bloody death at the hands of the mob, a tragedy at 
which the better element of Jews felt as much out- 
raged as the Christians themselves. Not long after, 
the church as a body forsook Jerusalem, convinced 
that the fate Jesus had foretold was now immedi- 
ately impending, as indeed it was. The Christians 
took refuge beyond Jordan, in and around the city 
of Pella. Jerusalem became the prey alternately of 
piratical Roman governors and still more ferocious 
and greedy Jewish marauders, till the irrepressi- 
ble war broke out in 67, and ended in 70 with the 
sack of the city and burning of the temple. Of 
all this Luke has nothing to say, not even of the 
death of James. 

There was one worthy Roman governor of all 
the series, who at the end of the two years’ im- 
prisonment of Paul became successor to Felix, and 
then, as if fate itself were against Israel, he fell 
victim to disease and died. Festus, had he lived, 
would have done all that good administration could 
do to avert the impending catastrophe. And Paul 
also, when news reached him in his prison of the 
new appointee, must have plucked up heart and 
laid his plans again to see, after all, his longed-for 
goal in the west, the church in Rome. 

Meantime his churches in Macedonia, Achaia, 
and Asia had been growing and developing apace. 


THE AMBASSADOR IN CHAINS 207 


We can only conjecture what their course of de- 
velopment was. At least the Judaizers were no 
longer to be greatly dreaded. Paul’s letters and 
Paul’s lieutenants were a power not easy to over- 
come, to say nothing of the effect of the delegation 
to Jerusalem. When the light breaks in again, we 
find Paul in correspondence with Macedonia and 
Asia, and the ever faithful Philippi is assured that 
Paul gives thanks to God “‘ on every remembrance 
of them.” Macedonia receives only a prophylactic 
warning against the “ concision.” They have never 
made headway in the north. No; the danger-point 
is in Asia, where, as we saw, theosophy and religious 
charlatanism sank their roots deep in congenial 
soil. Doubtless the speech of Paul at Miletus re- 
flects the events only as known in a much later 
time. Still it is undoubtedly a correct view of what 
actually took place, when the author makes Paul 
say, “I know that after my departing, grievous 
wolves shall enter in among you, not sparing the 
flock ; and from among your own selves shall men 
arise, speaking perverse things to draw away the 
disciples after them.” In our study of Ephesians 
and Colossians we shall have occasion to see what 
the nature of the “ perverse” teachings was. At 
present we can only note the growth that is going 
on during these years of silence. 

And as for Paul himself. Is his mind stationary ? 


208 THE STORY OF ST. PAUL 


Or have we reason to infer that he, too, during 
these years of enforced idleness, is growing and 
maturing his system of belief? The letters from 
Rome, often designated the “ Christological Epis- 
tles,” are sufficient proof that Paul’s mind during 
‘these silent years was not wholly preoccupied with 
the preparation of his own defense. The very fact 
that Colossians and Ephesians show such a develop- 
ment of Pauline thought, in particular such an 
enlargement in the conception of Christ’s preéx- 
istence, of his relation as archetype and head of 
humanity to creation as its ultimate goal and 
therefore also its final cause, such an extension of 
the doctrine of redemption to cover not only the 
human race but all races, “not only things on 
earth but things in the heavens,” has been used 
against them to disprove their authenticity. But it 
is admitted that these conceptions are all present in 
a partly developed form in the earlier Epistles, — 
the preéxistence in 1 Cor. x. 4, 2 Cor. viii. 9, Gal. 
iv. 4; the identification with the creative “ Wis- 
dom” of God in 1 Cor. i. 24, vill. 6; the cosmic 
nature of the redemption in Rom. viii. 19-22, 38, 
39; the universal lordship and reign over angelic 
powers in 1 Cor. vi. 3, xv. 25-28. It is admit- 
ted that Paul had his own cosmological philoso- 
phy even while in Ephesus (1 Cor. ii. 6-16), — a 
philosophy which he had only withheld from the 


, 


THE AMBASSADOR IN CHAINS 209 


Corinthians because of their unreadiness; it is 
admitted that in Ephesus there had been abundant 
occasion to call it forth, and that the Christological 
Epistles were written for the purpose of meeting 
a gnosis falsely so-called, i. e. a speculative theo- 
sophic system, partly related to Jewish apocalyptic, 
and partly to the mythology of the Greek and 
Phrygian mysteries. The fact, then, that we should 
find Paul’s letters to these Asiatic churches, writ- 
ten after this interval of at least three years, which 
includes the Cesarean imprisonment, displaying a 
marked development in what may be called specu- 
lative theology, is no more than we should expect. 
I cannot, indeed, lay any weight upon Paul’s send- 
ing for his rolls of the Scriptures, and certain 
other “ books,” in preparation for this long inter- 
val of quiet ; because the location of the fragment 
in 2 Timothy at the beginning of his Cesarean 
imprisonment is only a conjecture. But one thing 
more is evident from the language, as well as the 
subject-matter, particularly of Ephesians, namely, 
that Paul had been reading as well as reflecting ; 
for there are terms and phrases borrowed from the 
writings of others, and not only so, but express 
quotations from books unknown to us,one of which 
(Eph. v. 14) Epiphanius tells us is taken from the 
Apocalypse of Elias, the same writing identified 
_by Origen as source of the quotation in 1 Cor. ii. 


210 THE STORY OF ST. PAUL 


9. There is also evidence here that Paul had read 
the Assumptio Mosis, a writing of about 30 A. p., 
of the school of apocalyptic Judaism. But of this 
we must speak hereafter. 

When Luke resumes his story with the coming 
of Festus, it is to avail himself again of the apolo- 


” 


gia of Paul “ before governors and kings.” True 
we have seen already that the speech before Festus, 
Agrippa, and Bernice gives a version of Paul’s con- 
version and vocation so much nearer the facts than 
the narrative of chapter ix. that we can only sup- 
pose the author had here some better information, 
which he has partially adjusted to the Jewish-Chris- 
tian version in the speech of chapter xxii. In point 
of fact, the Diary resumes at this point, where Paul, 
having appealed to the Emperor, is sent by Festus 
to Rome. The Diarist evidently once more becomes 
Paul’s companion for this last eventful journey. He 
breaks in suddenly at xxvii. 1, “And when it 
was determined that we should sail for Italy.” 
Not improbably the source contained some report 
of how Paul by appealing to Cesar had won his 


” How much 


opportunity to “see Rome and die. 
of the speech under these circumstances belongs to 
the Diarist and how much to “ Luke” is a problem 
perhaps insoluble.1 At any rate, we have here, as 


1 Compare, however, Acts xxvi. 22, 23, with Luke xxiy. 27, 26, 
4448, 


THE AMBASSADOR IN CHAINS 211 


in the case of the speech at Athens, a comparatively 
trustworthy account of what Paul might have said. 
One would like to believe at least that the touching 
answer of Paul to the flippant sneer of Agrippa,“ A 
little more and you would have me turn Christian,” 
came by genuine historical tradition: ‘I would 
that whether by little or by much, not thou only, 
but also all that hear me this day, might become 
such as I am, except these bonds.” If to be a true 
Christian gentleman is Pauline, that answer is so. 
Again I am compelled to pass lightly over the 
romance of Paul’s life, the adventure and shipwreck 
so graphically told in the Diary. These are the 
scenes familiar to us from childhood. For what 
child does not appreciate the difference between 
these graphic pages and the marvelous but unreal 
tales of the early chapters of Acts? But just be- 
cause James Smith in his “ Voyage and Shipwreck 
of St. Paul,” and Ramsay again in his “St. Paul 
the Traveller,” have made them live again and yet 
again before us, I should deserve to be classed with 
those commentators who pass by deep obscurities 
and “hold a candle to the sun,” were I to repeat 
the story. We merely note how they first sailed 
to Myra, having Aristarchus with them, who had 
probably come on from Macedonia with the Diarist, 
and now returned ; how Julius the centurion there 
put them aboard a wheat ship of Alexandria bound 


212 THE STORY OF ST. PAUL 


for Italy ; how they touched at Crete, though with- 
out establishing communication with the Christians 
of the island; how Paul’s experience and dignity 
seem to have impressed Julius, though he naturally 
paid more heed to the master and owner; how the 
latter’s advice prevailed! (the Diarist indulges in 
something of the pleasure of saying in Paul’s name, 
“I told you so”) ; how in the shipwreck on Malta 
Paul’s grand personality came as it were to domi- 
nate the whole company of two hundred and sey- 
enty-six? souls, and subsequently on the island his 
adventure with the viper and his healing of the 
father of Publius of fever and dysentery procured 
him almost, or quite, superhuman reverence from 
“the barbarians,” as our Hellenistic Diarist dis- 
dainfully calls them ; how after three months in 
Malta they again embarked, touched at Syracuse 
and Rhegium, and at last landed at Puteoli. In all 
this we cannot dwell upon details, but only seek to 
read something of the Diarist’s personality and 
purpose in his writing, since the problem is all-im- 
portant in regard to the trustworthiness and rela- 
tion of our sources. At least it will appear that 
the Diary was not all written on the voyage itself. 
While its author was himself engaged like a com- 


1 As Ramsay points out, the Roman officer, though a landsman, 
was in command, as the superior in rank, by Roman law. 
2 Or, according to the Western text, seventy-six. 


THE AMBASSADOR IN CHAINS 213 


mon seaman in frapping the ship, jettisoning the 
cargo, if not in hewing away the mast, he is not 
likely to have gotten out his notes to report the 
very words of Paul’s speech of encouragement after 
his vision. The vision itself is what we might al- 
most expect. Once more face to face with death, 
“long without food,” “all hope that they should 
be saved taken away,” the conditions are just those 
in which Paul’s faith has ever been wont to react 
with an energy that shook his physical frame. 
‘¢ Fear not, Paul, thou must stand before Cesar ;” 
such was the message. It is what we know his 
faith would surely dictate. When first he had defi- 
nitely undertaken this journey to Rome he had 


written to the Corinthians, “ Now we are ambas- | 


sadors on behalf of Christ.”” Rome had given him 
his safe-conduct from the fury of the Jews. A 
higher than Cesar would give him safe-conduct 
from the fury of the elements. And one thing 
more: “ God hath granted thee all them that sail 
with thee.” It shows what Paul had been praying 
for during those nights and days of terror and suf- 
fering. God was with Paul. Do we need further 
explanation why his personality becomes as it were 
a protection to his very captors? 

We need not conceal from ourselves that the 
Diarist, too, is under the spell of that sublime per- 
sonality, and like the “ barbarians,” thinks of Paul 


——— 


‘ 
214 THE STORY OF ST. PAUL 


as almost more than human. To him the escape of 
all to land is something fully foreknown to Paul. 
Indeed, he thinks it almost an evidence of incapa- 
city in Julius that he should not have followed 
Paul’s advice rather than that of the owner and 
master of the ship. The fact that Paul should have 
shaken off the viper benumbed with cold into the 
fire and felt no harm seems to him not indeed evi- 
dence “ that he was a god,” but certainly more than 
the “‘ providential escape’? we would have called it. 
When, after the healing of Publius’ father, he tells 
us that “the rest also which had diseases in the 
island came and were cured,” he displays the same 
naive point of view as when at Philippi he related 
the exorcism of the girl with a spirit of divination, 
and at Troas Eutychus (to his mind) was restored 
to life from actual death, — “ insensibility,” we 
should call it. We do not get away from miracles 
as we get farther back toward contemporary re- 
ports. We find allusions to them as habitual oceur- 
rences in Paul’s own letters. We do get near 
enough to exclude the kind of miracle which is 
related in some parts of Acts, and near enough to 
see how the line between the miraculous and the 
providential quite vanishes away. If the Diary 
had contained no evidence of the author’s belief in 
having seen miracles, it would almost prejudice its 
authenticity. 


THE AMBASSADOR IN CHAINS 215 


The last chapter of Acts has two curiously con- 
trasting conceptions of Paul’s arrival at Rome. 
The one is that of the Diary, recounting to us how 
already at Puteoli they “found brethren” and 
spent seven days in company with them. From the 
church in Rome itself a delegation was sent to meet 
Paul at Appii Forum and Tres Taberne. “ And 
when Paul saw them, he thanked God, and took 
courage.” For the first time since he bade farewell, 
three years before, at Miletus to the elders of Ephe- 
sus, Paul was surrounded by loyal and true friends. 
This was the response to the letter from Corinth, 
written so long ago that it seemed almost a miracle 
that its aspiration and prayer should be answered 
at length. In Rome itself, «« Paul was permitted to) 
abide by himself with the soldier that guarded 
him,” and in that hired house he abode two whole 
years, receiving all that went in unto him, preach- 
ing+the kingdom of God without molestation, 
administering his great system of missionary corre- 
spondence, the centre again of a great field of 
evangelistic activity, at the “ goal of the west.” } 

Such is the Diarist’s report, and it joins exactly 
with what we know from the letters of the great 

1 This expression, repua tis dUcews, is employed by Clement of 
Rome, about 95 A. D., of Paul’s attaining his westward limit. It 
rests upon Paul’s own comparison of his €areer to a race with its 


two “ goals,” of which Jerusalem was one, the starting-point or 
goal of the east (Rom. xy. 19), and Rome, apparently, the other. 


216 THE STORY OF ST. PAUL 


Christian church already long established at Rome 
and even in the outlying towns. But side by side with 
it the author of the Christian apology, our Book of 
Acts, repeats his stereotyped formula of the pre- 
sentation of the Gospel first to the Jews, then, 
when these are mainly unbelieving, the turning to 
the Gentiles. And here as a kind of moral, or Q. 
E. D., to his entire work he appends the classic 
passage of Isaiah : — 


“Go thou unto this people and say, 
By hearing ye shall hear, and shall in no wise understand; 
And seeing ye shall see, and shall in no wise perceive : 
For this people’s [the Jews] heart is waxed gross, 
And their ears are dull of hearing, 
And their eyes they have closed; 
Lest haply they should perceive with their eyes, 
And hear with their ears, 
And understand with their heart, 
And should turn again, 
And I should heal them.” 


To which Paul adds, “ Be it known, therefore, unto 
you, that this salvation of God is sent unto the 
Gentiles : they will also hear.” 

With this parting denunciation of the unbeliey- 
ing Jews, the author concludes his task. His pur- 
pose and his main source reach an end together. 
Most likely the Diary, as in previous instances, 
came to an end with the journey; and as for the 
Apologist, he has reached his conclusion with the 


THE AMBASSADOR IN CHAINS 217 


unhindered proclamation of the Gospel to the Gen- 
tiles, in spite of Jewish opposition, at the metropo- 
lis of the empire, the centre of the Gentile world. 
Men ask, Why did he not relate the martyrdom 
of Paul at the hands of Nero? But to what end? 
He was not writing a history of Paul, but of the 
planting of the Gospel among the Gentiles. When 
Peter, his first great champion of the Gentile Gos- 
pel, has stood out for and achieved their liberty, he 
has no more to tell of Peter. Peter’s martyrdom is © 
passed over. He sinks into oblivion. When James 
has received the report of Paul and signified its ac- 
ceptance by the Jerusalem church, he wastes not a 
word onthe martyrdom of James. James, too, sinks 
into oblivion. The accidental fact that he possesses 
a source of exceptional fullness for the later life of 
Paul, and Paul’s career as a witness “ before gov- 
ernors and kings,” gives him just the opportunity he 
wants to plead the cause of Christianity against hos- 
tile Judaism before the tribunal of Roman justice. 
This necessarily brings the heroic figure of Paul 
into superlative prominence in all the last half of 
the book, and to ws makes it seem strange that he 
should stop where he does. But how much interest 
does he show in Paul’s earlier career? Paul is not 
to him the Apostle to the Gentiles. Peter, to him, 
has the better right to this title! Paul is not an 
1 Acts x. 1-xi. 18, and xv. 7. 


218 THE STORY OF ST. PAUL 


Apostle at all save as “delegate” with, and after, 
Barnabas, from the church in Antioch. It is only 
in those portions of Paul’s career which have to do 
with the relations of the Church with Judaism on 
the one side and the Roman government on the 
other, that he takes any interest in it even for the 
period best known to him and to us. His subject 
is not Paul, nor Peter; but the Gospel, which by 
prediction of the prophets, and promise of Jesus, 
and providential working of God, was to extend 
from Jerusalem “to Judza and Samaria and unto 
the uttermost parts of the earth.” If he has no- 
thing to say of the martyrdom of James and of 
Peter, why should we expect him to go beyond the 
point where the Gospel in Rome has free course 
and is glorified, to tell of the darker days that fol- 
lowed, and the martyrdom of Paul? 

In point of fact, he really does tell. Paul’s fare- 
well speech at Miletus is not meant to be after- 
ward corrected and taken back. When, twice over, 
‘“‘ Luke” emphasizes the point that Paul declared 
they should see his face no more, that his life 
would be the price of his journey, and that for this 
reason he takes them to witness that he has done 
his whole duty as a messenger of Christ, when he 
depicts their sorrow because this is a dast farewell, 
he does not have in mind a subsequent return from 
Rome, and revisiting of all these very churches 


—_—S |S 


THE AMBASSADOR IN CHAINS 219 


that Paul had parted from with such scenes of 
weeping. No, the reader is not left wholly in the 
dark as to Paul’s fate. He is given to know, with- 
out breach of the artistic design, that Paul’s life 
became indeed the sacrifice for which Paul freely 
offered it. 

Two more glimpses we have of Paul in Rome. 
But both are glimpses only, for they are the mere 
accidental revelations of two groups of letters. The 
narrative has ceased. The first reflects still the 
bright picture of the closing scene of Acts. Among 
those whom Paul “received,” that “went in unto 
him,” was one whom he had known in Ephesus as 
slave of Philemon, one of his own converts. This 
slave, Onesimus, had escaped to Rome. There, per- 
haps because he needed a friend to make peace for 
him,” he sought out Paul, and his heart was opened 
to the Gospel. To Paul, who now calls himself 
“Paul the aged,” Onesimus became as a son be- 
gotten in his bonds. And yet to keep him and say 
nothing to Philemon was not Paul’s idea of Chris- 


1 Tt is sufficient refutation of the argument for regarding Acts 
as only the second treatise of an intended (or actual) trilogy, 
based on the use of mp@Tos instead of mpérepos in Actsi. 1, to refer 
fo Mt. xxi. 31. There is no more need of a third treatise than of 
a third term for the antithesis of Hosea employed by Paul in 
Rom. ix. 25, 26, and by Peter in 1 Pet. ii. 10. 

2 An interesting parallel is afforded by one of the letters of 
Pliny, written to a friend to intercede on behalf of a runaway 
slave, at whose solicitation it seems to be written. 


220 THE STORY OF ST. PAUL 


tian emancipation. On the contrary, as he is send- 
ing Tychicus with letters for the region of Colossz 
and Ephesus, he sends Onesimus also, bearer of a 
personal note to Philemon, than which none more 
exquisite or touching survives in any literature. 
Here speaks again the grace, even the humorous 
playfulness, of the true, high-born, Christian gen- 
tleman. And Paul, withal, though aged, and, as 
he says, an “‘ ambassador in chains,” is yet hopeful 
and buoyant. Playfully he bids Philemon “ prepare 
him also a lodging, for he hopes soon to visit him.” 

Such are the circumstances of the first group of 
letters, for Colossians, Ephesians, and Philemon 
were dispatched together. Of the circumstances 
of the churches we have already said somewhat. 
More will appear in the discussion of the letters 
themselves. As for Paul, Tychicus the bearer was 
to explain how he fared. His friends were anxious, 
but he bids them be of good cheer. He himself 
has good hope and courage. 

The other glimpse is near the end. Philippians 
and 2 Timothy were written not far apart; but 
Paul’s situation has altered, and that not for the 
better, though, writing to the Philippians, he still 
cheers them up, and promises to send Timothy so 
soon as he shall know how it will go with him. 
But now, though he has great hope in God, it is 
clear that he no longer has earthly ground of en- 


THE AMBASSADOR IN CHAINS 221 


couragement to give. Moreover, in Philippians it 
is apparent that he has recently suffered actual 
want and misery. Epaphroditus had reached him 
at last with a belated gift from Paul’s beloved 
Philippians, but only at the risk of his life. Paul’s 
preaching, too, is at an end. He looks forward to 
but one more last service for Christ, when his 
blood shall be “ poured out a libation upon the sac- 
rifice and service of their faith.” 1 

Once more we hear, and for the last time. Timo- 
thy has now departed. If Philippians is the swan- 
song of the martyr, 2 Timothy is the dying legacy 
of the great Apostle. In Philippians he wrote, “ If 
I am poured out a libation upon your offering; ” 
now he writes, “I am already being poured out a 
libation, and the time of my departure is come. [ 
have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, 
I have kept the faith. Henceforth there is laid up 
for me [as its prize] the wreath of righteousness 
which the Lord, the righteous judge [Paul is no 
longer expecting justice from Nero], shall give to 
me at that day, and to all them also that have 
loved his appearing.” 


Ss 
The object of the letter is to transmit to Timo- 


1 As in Rom. xy. 16, Paul conceives himself as a priest pre- 
senting to God the offering of the Gentiles, only now the gift will 
be accompanied by his own blood poured out as a libation. He 
repeats the figure in 2 Tim. iv. 6. 


t 

222 THE STORY OF ST. PAUL 
thy, his “beloved child,”’! the “ deposit” with 
which Paul felt that he had been intrusted. As in 
Rom. iii. 2 he had called it the supreme greatness 
of the Israel that had been, that “to them were 
intrusted the oracles of God,’ so now what he has 
to bequeath from the foot of the scaffold is not lands 
or wealth, but the gospel God had revealed to him 
as a “trust” for men. The last duty of the dying 
‘ambassador for Christ” is to place in faithful hands 
the message wherewith he was intrusted, “the 
mystery of the divine purpose and grace, given us 
in the person of Christ, before times eternal, but 
manifested now by the appearing of Christ as a 
Saviour abolishing death and bringing life and in- 
corruption to light through the Gospel.” Paul is 
now suffering a felon’s death for it; but he is not 
confounded, because he believes God can guard 
it against that day. Timothy too must “guard it 
__through the Holy Ghost.” 

There is no evidence in any of these letters of 
the presence of Peter in Rome, so strongly attested 
by tradition. It can hardly have been until after 
Paul’s death that Peter took the position toward 
“the flock of God,” ‘ the elect who are sojourners 


1 Not in the sense of youth (so 1 Tim. iy. 12 seems erroneously 
to take it), but as ‘‘ son and heir.” 

22 Tim. i. 9-14. See R. V. margin. “The deposit” in verse 12 
as well as verse 14 is that which God has intrusted to Paul, not 
vice versa. Cf. 1 Tim. vi. 20, and Jude 3 and 20. 


so 


THE AMBASSADOR IN CHAINS 223 


of the dispersion,” in all Paul’s Asiatic field, which 
appears in 1 Peter. After Paul’s death Peter may 
have become his real spiritual successor, and not 
only in the service of administration from Rome, 
but also in martyrdom; but Peter does not even 
appear upon the horizon of the letters. 

It is only through the gray mists of tradition 
that we dimly see the end. From a generation later 
Clement of Rome leoks back to the “ brave exam- 
ple” of “« Peter, who endured, not one or two, but 
many labors, and having borne his testimony 
(vaprupyicas) went to his appointed place of glory,” 
and that of “ Paul, who by his example pointed out 
the prize of patient endurance. After that he had 
been seven ! times in bonds, had been driven into ex- 
ile, had been stoned, had preached in the East and 
in the West. he won the noble renown which was 
the reward of his faith, having taught righteous- 
ness unto the whole world, and reached the goal? 


1 We know of but three imprisonments of Paul. The accounts 
of his life in cireulation in Clement’s day (95 A.D.) have not all 
been preserved in Acts. 

2 Some endeavor to find in the highly rhetorical phraseology of 
1 Clem. vy. 7 evidence of a release of Paul from imprisonment, and 
carrying out of the journey to Spain planned before his arrest, 
Rom. xy. 28. They then proceed to argue for further journeys in 
the old missionary field, so as to make room for the Pastoral Epis— 
tles in their present form. In reality Clement is here simply fol- 
lowing (as already shown) the figure suggested by Paul himself 
(e.g. 2 Tim. iv. 7). Note Clement’s allusion to “the prize of patient 


224 THE STORY OF ST. PAUL 


of the West. So, when he had borne his testimony 
(paptupjcas) before the rulers, Paul also departed 
from the world and went unto the holy place.” 

Of these martyrdoms there are but faint traces 
in the New Testament. Hebrews, written probably 
to a Jewish-Christian church (in Rome?) about 80 
A. D., has a similar but fainter allusion (Clement’s 
epistle is in fact largely an imitation of Hebrews) 
to “ resistance unto blood,” and ‘one specific com- 
mendation of the example of those which had the 
rule over you, which spake unto you the word of — 
God,” the “issue of whose lives” (éBaow ris dva- 
atpopys) should be remembered. 

Rome is the guilty city henceforth to Christian 
thought, the Babylon of 1 Peter, the ally of Anti- 
christ, and not his “restrainer” as in Paul. To 
the seer of Revelation she is “ drunk with the blood 
of the saints and of the martyrs of Jesus.” The 
Apocalyptist, too, has one marked expression which 
certainly did not apply to many of the victims of 
Nero’s fear and fury. “I saw the souls of them 
that had been beheaded [executed, as the Roman 
citizen had a right to be, and as tradition reports 
that Paul was, by the lictor’s axe] for the testi- 
mony of Jesus.” 4 


endurance ” (cf. Heb. xii. 1). In the next sentence he applies the 
same figure to the women martyrs of the Roman church. 
1 Rey. xx. 4. 


THE AMBASSADOR IN CHAINS 225 


Paul’s fate must have seemed a frightful foretaste 
of what the Church had to expect from that em- 
peror to whom they had looked as a protector.! 
Perhaps in the secrecy of the prison itself, perhaps 
without the walls, as tradition says, but with no 
outward show or possibility of public demonstra- 
tion, that good gray head, with its countenance 
“full of graciousness, like an angel’s,”? was laid 
upon the block, and the blood of the Apostle of the 
Gentiles was “ poured out a libation upon the sac- 
rifice and service of their faith.” 

And was there no meeting and reconciliation 
with Peter? In one way there was. Church tradi- 
tion insists that “in their death they were not 
divided.” That form of it embodied as prediction 
in an appendix to the Gospel of John ° is too early 


1 To the people, especially of the East, Nero, during all the 
earlier part of his reign, was a model ruler. His palace intrigues 
and family murders scarcely affected them. Only at the very last 
is there a sudden change. Nero becomes Antichrist himself after 
his horrible cruelties inflicted on the Christians as authors of the 
great fire of July, 64. 

2 A very ancient and credible description of Paul’s personal 
appearance is found in the second century romance called the 
Acts of Paul and Thekla, as well as in some anti-Pauline sources. 
Besides the stunted stature, the meeting eyebrows, the long, 
hooked nose, the trait which strikes us as surely true to life is the 
expression of an angelic “ graciousness.” At least it well accords 
with all the bearing of this true gentleman, as we know him from 
his letters. 

8 John xxi. 1S, 19. 


226 THE STORY OF ST. PAUL 


not to rest on reasonably trustworthy remembrance ; 
and there we are told in symbol and allegory “ by 
what manner of death ” Peter also “ glorified God.” 
The grotesque and ingenious cruelty of the torture 
bespeaks the inventive brutality of Nero, as Tacitus 
himself describes his onslaught on the Christians 
of Rome. Tradition as to the manner and date of 
Peter’s crucifixion, head downward, and in the Ne- 
ronian persecution at Rome in the summer of 64, 
is at least consistent with itself and with the report 
of the great Roman historian. Peter is found worthy 
at last to fulfill the offer, “ Lord, why cannot I fol- 
low thee now? I will lay down my life for thee.” 
It was not long after the lictor’s axe had fallen 
that Peter and Paul met again. Having witnessed 
a good confession, they entered in together to sit 
down with their common Lord in his heavenly 
kingdom, “even as he also overcame, and entered 
in to sit down at the right hand of the Father.” 


PART If 


_ THE LETTERS IN THE LIGHT OF THE 
“Sas HISTORY 





LECTURE VII 


LETTERS OF THE SECOND MISSIONARY 
JOURNEY 


We have found reason to think that Paul wrote 
three letters from Corinth, the ultimate and most 
important station of his so-called Second Mission- 
ary Journey, really the first journey of his inde- 
pendent missionary career. Busily laboring and 
preaching from place to place, he had forced his 
way down through the Greek peninsula, until in 
the principal city of all, centre of its southernmost 
division, he took up a somewhat more permanent 
abode, and had leisure to review the situation. 
What that situation was we already know in 
a general way from Acts, and from the surface 
indications of the letters themselves. Paul has 
been laboring already some time in Achaia in con- 
junction with his new-found helpers, Aquila and 
Prisca. Silvanus and Timothy are now with him 
too, the latter just arrived from Thessalonica. 
Silas! appears to have been left in Berza, but to 
have returned to Paul in Corinth earlier.2 As for 


1 Not “ Timothy and Silas,” as in Acts xvii. 14. We see from 
1 Thess. iii. 1 that Timothy went on with Paul to Athens. 
2 1 Thess. iii. 6. 


230 THE STORY OF ST. PAUL 


conditions in the Pauline churches, the situation 
varies. In Macedonia the general outlook is very 
favorable ; for Timothy has just “ brought word of 
their faith and love, and that they have good re- 
membrance of Paul always, and long to see him.” 
Their difficulties are partly external, partly such as 
are incidental to immaturity in the Christian life. 
The two letters show one side of a correspondence 
in which Paul seeks to make his converts “ abound 
more and more” in the life of Christian service, 
and they on their part ask further instructions and 
directions as to particulars. The character which 
the two letters bear upon their surface has led to 
their being classified by themselves as the so- 
called Missionary Epistles, though Paul’s attitude 
in them is that of confirmer rather than proclaimer 
of the Gospel. 

In Galatia the situation is highly critical, and 
this letter reflects vividly the strong emotion of the 
Apostle. Because his mood is so polemic, and the 
news received has so deeply agitated him, it is 
argued with much force that it must have come 
later than the writing of the Thessalonian letters, 
which (it is urged) would otherwise surely exhibit 
more traces of the Apostile’s feeling. On the other 
hand, were Galatians written after the coming of 
Silas and Timothy from Macedonia, it would seem 
strange that Paul should neither associate their 


LETTERS OF THE SECOND JOURNEY 231 


names with his, as in the superscription of both 
Thessalonian epistles, nor even send a greeting to 
those who knew them so well in Galatia. We may 
indeed suppose that Silas and Timothy were again 
temporarily absent, but on the whole it seems a 
_more reasonable view to consider Galatians the 
earlier, Silas and Timothy not yet arrived, and the 
agitation of Paul’s mind so far quieted by the good 
report from Macedonia as to leave no very marked 
impress upon his letters to the Thessalonians.! 
Nevertheless, since the Thessalonian correspondence 
stands apart from the great battle waged in the other 
epistles, we may appropriately begin with these, 
seeking an acquaintance with Paul’s inner life 
through the medium of utterances drawn out by the 
situation of his correspondents. 

We premise a word as to Paul’s correspondence in 
general and the literary character of his Epistles. 
Are they true letters, or do they deserve rather the 
title of “epistle” in the sense Deissmann would give 
it, namely, a literary product having the form of 
a letter, but really rather an essay or sermon? Not 
only does the literature of the time abound with 
such “ epistles” or ostensible letters of celebrities, 


1 Tt would not be true to hold that there are no such indications 
of agitation even in the relatively calm exhortations of the Thes- 
salonian epistles. See my Introduction to the New Testament, p. 71, 
note. 


232 THE STORY OF ST. PAUL 


usually published under a transparent pseudonym, 
but among the later writings of the New Testament 
there are several writings, such as Hebrews, James, 
1 John, which are clearly literary, or at least ser- 
monic, compositions. They have more or less defi- 
nite address, but were intended from the first for 
general circulation. In a measure this is trie even 
of some of Paul’s letters. Romans is almost a the- 
ological essay. It is addressed to a church where 
Paul had no direct personal acquaintance, and was 
meant in some degree to give a general outline of 
his doctrine, perhaps was adapted for general cir- 
culation from a very early time. Even Galatians is 
not meant for one church, but for several; and 
Colossians contains specific directions regarding 
exchange with a sister epistle which is to reach 
Colosse via Laodicea. On the other hand, the Co- 
rinthian letters, especially the bitter letter spoken of 
in 2 Cor. ii. 4, whether or not we identify it with 
the last four chapters of 2 Corinthians, form an 
intimately personal correspondence. The probably 
spurious second half of 1 Cor. i. 2, which in an 
awkward and ungrammatical way extends the ori- 
ginal address to the church in Corinth to cover “all 
that call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ 
in every place, their [Lord ?] and ours,” illustrates 
the process of adaptation. The letter is not a gen- 
eral “ epistle,” but the answer to a letter written to 


LETTERS OF THE SECOND JOURNEY 233 


Paul from Corinth. Obviously, the drawing of a 
hard and fast line between “letters” and “ epis- 
tles” would be untrue to fact. It is a question of 
more or less. At the same time it is easy to see 
that the church epistle, as a regular, recognized ° 
mode of edification, such as it became in the second 
century, grew out of the simple letter called forth 
by some special occasion, and not vice versa. We 
have “ epistles ” because Paul, not being gifted with 
ubiquity, was forced to write letters under press of 
circumstances to help his churches in their diffi- 
culties. He did not sit down deliberately and say, 
Come now, and let us embody the doctrine in a 
literature. He wrote as occasion demanded, and 
the practice he inaugurated was subsequently de- 
veloped. The Catholic Epistles rest on Paul; not 
Paul on the Catholic Epistles. 

/But Paul also wrote with the care and literary 
painstaking one gives to a letter that is to be read, 
say in a half-dozen large assemblies, on matters of 
vital moment. He naturally maintained, too, the 
forms prescribed in communications of the kind 
by good usage, with modifications suggested by 
Christian courtesy and perhaps by the usages of 
synagogue and church order. 

The external address on the envelope, or wrapper, 
has naturally disappeared from all the New Testa- 
ment letters. In the case of all the Pauline Epis- 


234 THE STORY OF ST. PAUL 


tles the inner superscription, containing address, 
greeting, and signature in one, has been preserved, 
though textual corruption appears in some eases.’ 
In this greeting Christian influence is very appar- 
ent in the joming of the Hebrew shalom to the 
Greek xaipew. Perhaps this double form,? with its 
tenfold increase of significance through the reli- 
gious connotation the words have acquired, displays 
also the influence of synagogue practice upon the 
custom of the Church; for synagogue worship 
began with a blessing, introducing the Shema, or 
creed, and ended with a benediction, pronounced 
by a priest, if any were present. We know that in 
Paul’s time synagogue worship was the model for 
the Church in many respects (e. g. the responsive 
« Amen” of the congregation, 1 Cor. xiv. 16), and 
letters meant to be read to the churches may well 
have conformed in their opening salutation and 
closing benediction to church custom. At least this 
is the invariable practice of Paul. Whether the 
division of the practical section into exhortations 


1 The words év ’Epécw, Eph. i. 1, are proved by MS. evidence to 
be unauthentic, a scribal substitute for some original address now 
irrecoverable. Also 1 Cor. i. 2 6, we have seen to be a later addi- 
tion. Otherwise the Pauline superscriptions appear to be un- 
touched. The superscription of Hebrews is missing altogether ; 
those of James and Jude are apparently of scribal composition. 
These two even seem to be from the same hand. 

2 In the Pastoral Epistles triple: “‘ grace, mercy and peace.” 


LETTERS OF THE SYZCOND JOURNEY 235 


particularly addressed to the various social classes, 
husbands, wives, children, slaves, which is so marked 
in Ephesians and Colossians, and has been imitated 
in 1 Peter, is in any degree suggested by the seating 
arrangements, a division for each class, which also 
seem to have followed synagogue practice, is much 
more doubtful. But it is not unreasonable to see 
traces of the ‘“ homiletic habit” in Paul’s custom- 
ary arrangement of his material in such a way as 
to present first his doctrinal argument, then, in 
conclusion, by way of practical application, a direct 
moral exhortation forcing home the doctrinal truths. 

Finally, this main substance of the letter in its 
doctrinal and practical divisions is inclosed in a 
framework wholly epistolary in character. At the 
beginning, immediately after the salutation, it is 
Paul’s almost invariable! rule to insert a thanks- 
giving for what he hears of his correspondents’ 
favorable condition, and a prayer for its continu- 
ance. A similar custom is observed in the secular 
letters of the period. It has been compared to the 
stereotyped phrase of the latter-day “‘ complete let- 
ter-writer :” “ Yours received and contents noted. 
We are in good health and trust you enjoy the 
same.’ Deissmann and Rendel Harris have shown, 
in fact, from a comparison of this feature of Paul’s 
letters with the similar phraseology of the masses 


1 Galatians, for special reasons, forms an exception. 


236 THE STORY OF ST. PAUL 


of contemporary correspondence unearthed in the 
Fayoum, that it is possible in several cases to re- 
store the very phraseology of the letter Paul is 
"answering. Such is very notably the case in the 
Thessalonian correspondence with which we are now 
dealing. When Timothy came down from Thessa- 
lonica, he did not bring merely a verbal report, but 
a letter, which Paul is answering in 1 Thess. i—iii. 
From ii. 13 it is apparent that the letter to Paul 
began, like his own, with such expressions of Chris- 
tian courtesy. They had said, « We give thanks to 
God for you” (Paul and Sylvanus), to which Paul 
replies, “ We also thank God without ceasing for 


9 
. 


you.” There is no other adequate explanation of 
the “also” of 1 Thess. ii. 13, corresponding as it 
does to the same expression in Eph. vi. 211 and 
elsewhere. We may go even farther. The Thessa- 
lonians’ letter had proceeded, much as Paul de- 
scribes its contents in ili. 6, with an expression of 
their warm remembrance of the “apostles,” and 
their longing to see them. It spoke of the persecu- 
tions they had suffered,? and probably of certain 
slanders against Paul, against which they vehe- 
mently declared that they made the “apostles” 


1 Emphasize thus: “ That ye also may know my affairs, how I 
do,’’ ete. 

2 Cf. iii. 3, ‘‘ these afflictions,” alluding to ii. 14, but probably 
also to the Thessalonians’ own report. 


S 


ee 
eee 


LETTERS OF THE SECOND JOURNEY 237 


their joy and glorying. Paul answers in ii. 19, 20, 
“Ve are our glory and our joy.”1 In fact, this 
refrain seems to be carried over even into 2 Thes- 
salonians, the answer to a second letter to. Paul, 
Perhaps in answer to a modest deprecation on their 
part of Paul’s boasting of them, Paul replies in 
2 Thess. i. 3, 4, ii. 13, that it is only meet and right. 
He feels it his bounden duty to give thanks to God 
for them, and their example has given him occasion 
to boast of their patience and faith under persecu- 
tion. Another expression that runs through the 
whole correspondence (1 Thess. i. 6, ii. 14, 2 Thess. 
iii. T-9) is “imitation.” The Thessalonians seem 
also to have declared their determination to “ imi- 


1 The Corinthian correspondence furnishes a remarkable par- 
allel in 2 Cor. i. 14. In the painful letter Paul had declared him- 
self forced by the silence of the Corinthians to commend himself, 
whereas it was their province rather to be his living “ letters of 
commendation,’’ boasting of him and glorying in him. In 2 Cor. 
i. 12-14 he seems to be answering a protest that he was too hard 
upon them. Paul replies that he only meant that they had not 
vindicated him as his own conscience told him he should have 
been. He grants that they did “ acknowledge us in part that we 
are your glorying, even as ye also are ours.” He will not again 
resort to self-commendation (iii. 1-3). But in ix. 1-5 he boasts 
of the generosity of the Macedonians, and says he has boasted 
to them of that of the Corinthians. It appears, thus, that it was 
habitual with Paul to inculcate this reciprocal trust and confi- 
dence between himself and his churches, as well it might be in 
those times of slander and “devices of Satan.’”’ He purposely 
made the churches his boast. They owed him the same loyal 
confidence. 


238 THE STORY OF ST. PAUL 


tate” Paul and his helpers, in the taking of trials 
patiently. Paul, in 1 Thessalonians, declares it to 
be an imitation of the Lord also,1 and an imitation 
of the Judean churches. In 2 Thessalonians he 
bids them tell the busybodies to “ imitate” his 
honest industry. 

Remembrances, prayers, and good wishes occupy 
this place after the salutation in nearly all the Epis- 
tles, sometimes extending to great length.2 At the 
close, however, just before the benediction, Paul— 
customarily inserts matters of business, his plans of 
travel, directions to church officers, details concern- 
ing his arrangements for the collection, the dispatch 
of his messengers, or the like, and greetings from 
friends about him. This “ epistolary matter” is 
thus subordinated to the main purpose of doctrinal 
instruction and practical guidance. The relative 
proportions of the two may even afford some indica- 
tion of the extent to which we should classify these 
compositions as letter, sermon, or doctrinal treatise. 

Reserving Galatians, let us see, then, in outline, 
wherever the subject does not call for fuller treat- 


1 Cf. Eph. v. 1. 

2 In Ephesians the thanksgiving and prayer hice completely 
displaced the usual doctrinal section, leaving only the practical 
exhortation to follow after chapters i—iii. The similarity in this 
respect to both Thessalonian epistles is a support to the authenti- 
city of Ephesians and 2 Thessalonians, the two most disputed of 
the ten. 


LETTERS OF THE SECOND JOURNEY 239 


ment, what Paul has to say to this Macedonian 
church. 
The salutation is without exceptional feature : 1 


“Paul, and Silvanus, and Timothy, to the commonwealth 
of the Thessalonians in God the Father and the Lord Jesus 
Christ : Grace to you and peace.” 


The thanksgiving and prayer are dominated by 
the note which rings through all the first three 
chapters — mutual confidence. 


“‘We remember and pray for you, thanking God for you, 
because we know that you belong to his ‘election.’ Because 
our preaching of the Gospel to you was not a mere matter of 
words. There was power [miracles], there was outpouring 
of the Spirit [tongues], there was great conviction. We re- 
member your faith and hope and love. You too know what 
kind of men we showed ourselves to be toward you.” 


1 That is, it forms no exception to the Pauline practice. As 
compared with secular practice, the clause ‘‘in God... and 
Christ ” has the highest significance. As Deissmann has shown 
(Die neutestamentliche Formel *Ev Xpiot@ “Inood), the use of the 
preposition ev with persons is most exceptional. The phrases “in 
God,” “ in Christ,” are a coinage of Paul’s. The value of the prepo- 
sition can be best appreciated by recalling the original significance 
of the Greek “ enthusiasm,”’ literally ‘‘ possession ” by the divin- 
ity, as the Gospels speak of possession by evil spirits as being “in 
an unclean spirit.” The phrase here, and elsewhere in the Pauline 
writings, is analogous to that of Rev. i. 10, iv. 2, “I was in the 
Spirit,” only that for Paul to be “in the Spirit” is not a spas- 
modie condition of ecstasy, but the normal condition of the Chris- 


tian who ‘ 


“no longer lives, but Christ, the Spirit, lives in him.” 
So the communication between him and his correspondents is “ in 


God and Christ.” 


240 THE STORY OF ST. PAUL 


This strain continues to the end of chapter iii., 
with so much appeal to the evidence of the apos- 
tles’ conduct when in Thessalonica as proof that 
they had no insidious, self-seeking aims, and ex- 
planation of why, in spite of the persecution the 
church had endured, Paul had not been able to 
come to them, that it is apparent that slanders had 
been circulated, probably from Jewish sources, and 
that the Thessalonians had reported them. The sec- 
tion of mingled prayer, thanksgiving, and reply 
which thus in 1 Thessalonians takes the place of 
the ordinary doctrinal section, reminds us partly of 
Ephesians, where the prayer and thanksgiving are 
similarly extended, partly of 1 Corinthians, where 
reply to the letter from Corinth oceupies the same 
position. But we may pass on to the second half, 
chapters iv., v., where Paul appends his practical 
exhortation. 

He concludes the first part with thanksgiving for 
their good progress, and prayer to see them again. 
The second part is an entreaty to abound more and 
more in their obedience to what Paul had taught 
them. Thus courteously he makes opportunity to 
speak of the particulars in which there is — in mod- 
ern phrase — room for improvement. 

We are not surprised, in view of the special cir- 
cumstances of a Greek community, and the spe- 
cial occasion in the critical attitude of the mother 


LETTERS OF THE SECOND JOURNEY 241 


church, that sexual morality occupies first place in 
the exhortation. 

Love of the brethren, Paul says, they hardly 
need to be urged to. But they can abound herein 
still more, and perhaps they’ may need to be re- 
minded that this virtue should show itself in the 
homely, practical way of quiet industry and atten- 
tion to business. Dependence on others under the 
plea of religion is a breach of the law of love.1. The 
warning is significant. 

Practical experience had brought up one doctrinal 
point in regard to which a Greek church would 
naturally not be clear in its views. Several of the 
church had died. Would they miss the resurrection 
and appearing of Jesus to judgment and the setting 
up of his kingdom? Jewish eschatology had been 
adopted, but all its refinements had not found en- 
trance. As with the Corinthians, among whom the 
differences between the Greek doctrine of spiritual 
immortality and the Jewish of bodily resurrection 
had developed more serious conflicts, Paul makes 

1 Cf. Eph. iv. 28, where dishonesty is excluded because the fun- 
damental principle of the Christian social order is reciprocal ser- 
vice, industry, “that one may have whereof to give to him that 
hath need.” Lying, in the same connection, is forbidden “ because 
we are members one of another.” The spirit of the world is 
predatory, that of Christ ministrative. Paul at least apprehends 
“the law of Christ” as a new social principle, though he does 


not (at least at first) look for its full application, in the present 
world. 


249 THE STORY OF ST. PAUL, 


the resurrection of Jesus the type and norm of be- 
lief. At the same time the mould of Paul’s present 
conceptions is the conventional Jewish, or Rabbinic. 
God will bring with Jesus, when he comes again, 
those who have died “in him.” These, then, will 
have already received that body of “ glory,” like 
the Lord’s, which, as incorruptible, is alone capa- 
ble of “ inheriting the kingdom of God.” Or, more 
probably, since they are said to “rise” after the 
“voice of the archangel” and the “trumpet of 
God,” Paul now conceives! that they receive it at 
_ that moment, having in the mean time remained 
“‘unclothed ” (bodiless) in the under-world : — 

“ Afterwards we that are left, that are alive at the parousia 
[Paul at this time expected it during his lifetime, and the 
retention of the mistaken idea is proof of the genuineness of 
the letter], will be caught up into the air to meet the Lord. 
There, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, our corrupt- 
ible bodies will be changed by the mighty working whereby 
God changed the body of Jesus in the resurrection, into the 
likeness of his own body of glory-substance. The earth 
meantime will have also been transformed,? and the Messianic 
reign will begin.” 

Such, in the simplicity of Jewish apocalyptic 
thought, is Paul’s eschatology, as it would seem to 
have been in the days of his missionary preaching. 

1 The later letters show considerable change in Paul’s escha- 


tology. 
2 This seems to be the purpose of believers being caught up into 


the air; ef. Rev. xxi. 1,5; 2 Pet. iii. 5-7. 


LETTERS OF THE SECOND JOURNEY 243 


Part of it, at least, he assures the Thessalonians, is 
based on direct teaching of Jesus. If he means 
more than the simple statement that “we that are 
alive and are left until the coming of the Lord, 
shall not precede them that are fallen asleep,” he 
is alluding to some teaching of which we have no 
record. If he means only this, the reference may 
be possibly to the promise, ‘“ He that loseth his life 
for my sake and the Gospel’s shall save it,” or 
some connected saying. 

As for the time of the cataclysm, Paul has no- 
thing to tell, save to repeat the warning of Jesus, 
to watch and be ready, because it will overtake 
the unprepared as a thief in the night. With this 
exhortation to watchfulness for the great Day, 
and a few words of special advice regarding church 
administration, the First Epistle closes. 

-But the correspondence continues. Again in 
2 Thess. i. 11, the “ we also pray always for you” in- 
dicates that the Thessalonians had replied, intimat- 
ing that they had not been forgetful of the request 
of 1 Thess. v. 25, “ Brethren, pray for us.” But the 
second installment of the correspondence is almost 
wholly occupied with the subject which in ourselves 
also principally awakens curiosity and questioning 
in the first letter, namely, Paul’s doctrine of the 
end of the world. Apparently such mistaken no- 
tions of his meaning had been evinced that Paul 


244 THE STORY OF ST. PAUL 


questions whether the doctrines imputed to him are 
not the invention of his enemies in some forgery. 
Hence he adopts for future safety the plan of an 
autograph postscript (the letters in their main con- 
tents are dictated), which is to be the token of 
genuineness in every letter. 

Under the same epistolary outline as before, a 
thanksgiving and prayer, followed by practical ex- 
hortation, Paul now gives a restatement of his 
eschatology, guarding against the impression appar- 
ently created by his first letter, that the end was 
immediately impending. He had said it would be 
sudden, and implied that he and his readers would 
witness it; he had urged them to watch and be 
ready. But they, instead of giving heed also to his 
gentle and courteous suggestion in regard to quiet 
industry and self-dependence, had rather suffered 
the superstitious tendencies to increase which in 
our day are designated “ Millerite.” Now, Paul 
imposes a check; first by interjecting as a prelimi- 
nary to the end the doctrine of Antichrist; next, 
in the practical section, by changing his gentle ex- 


1 This provision (2 Thess. ii. 2, iii. 17) has been the principal 
occasion of suspicion of the genuineness of 2 Thessalonians itself, 
since it was obvious that forgery in Paul’s lifetime was improb- 
able. Jiilicher, however, has suggested with plausibility that 
Paul’s suspicions were aroused by reports which really were 
founded on his own letter, only so distorted in meaning that he 
did not recognize it. 


LETTERS OF THE SSCOND JOURNEY 245 


hortation of 1 Thess. iv. Li, 12, into a more per- 
emptory and fuller direction to the church leaders 
to enforce discipline and suppress the disorders. 
The expressions suggest that the leaders them- 
selves had desired him to speak authoritatively. 
But we must return to Paul’s eschatology. Next 
to the Pastoral Epistles and Ephesians, 2 Thessa- 
lonians is the most disputed of the Pauline Epis- 
tles, principally because of its exposition of current 
Jewish apocalypse. The doctrine of Antichrist, 
modifying the simple exhortation to watch and be 
ready for the sudden coming of Christ to judgment 
which characterizes the First Epistle, is new and 
strange, at least to us. Something similar appears 
in the apocalyptic chapter (Mt. xxiv.= Mk. xiii.= 
Lk. xxi.) of the Synoptic Gospels. There the basis 
is a simple exhortation of Jesus to watch and be 
ready, undisturbed by the cries of false teachers 
and pseudo-Messiahs. To this has been added a 
brief sketch of the end of all things, which is sim- 
ply the stereotyped outline of Jewish apocalypse. 
It includes, in particular, the doctrine of a climax 
of evil, when the Abomination of Desolation (a 
heathen idol ?)! should be set up in the temple, as 
1 Abomination that desolates is probably a word-play. It is the 
Greek rendering of OMY Vw, standing for nyav by2- For 
by>, which no pious Jew pend pronounce, the rabbis substi- 
tuted \aplean i.e. “ abominable thing ;” for hal) they put OD» 


246 THE STORY OF ST. PAUL 


had happened under Antiochus Epiphanes, and as 
would have happened in the year 40 if the assas- 
sin’s knife had not interrupted the insane demand 
of Caligula. There can be little doubt that in this 
particular, at least, Jesus’ own teaching regarding 
the “last things” has been seriously affected by 
apocalyptic ‘ prophecy,” which itself reflects the 
horror of those years of suspense. It is by no 
means so clear that he did not actually teach sub- 
stantially what appears in the rest of the chapter, 
though not at one time. Most critics, however, be- 
lieve that in the gospel outline depicting (1) the 
beginning of travail, (2) the birth-pangs of Mes- 
siah, (3) the coming of the Son of Man, we have 
the actual insertion of one of the innumerable 
apocalypses which circulated about the middle of 
the first century in both church and synagogue. 
Similarly, many believe that 2 Thessalonians bears 
the same relation to the teaching of Paul as this 
interpolated apocalypse of Mk. xiii. 7, 8, 14-20, 
24-27, to the teaching of Jesus. If we deem it im- 
portant to our faith to be able to hold that Jesus 
and Paul were not sharers in the current beliefs of 
their time regarding the end of the world, then this 
is certainly the easiest way out. But why should it 


“ desolating.” Coins of the Phenician and Philistine coast of the 
period of Antiochus show that DOYDW Dyn was the Semitic 
equivalent of Zeds "Oupdvios. 


LETTERS OF THE SECOND JOURNEY 247 


detract from the grandeur of those inspired minds 
to see them frankly sharing the ideas of their time 
regarding the wind-up of the world, uncouth as 
they seem to us, and yet unfettered by them ; wear- 
ing them, not as Saul’s armor, but with the light- 
ness and ease of those who have been made free by 
the knowledge of greater truth? Later, the out- 
worn ideas drop from the Gospel as the encasing 
sheath drops from the opening bud. 

To the extent that the disputed verses in the 
Gospels can be shown to be out of keeping with 
Jesus’ undeniable utterances, or to bear the marks 
of a later time, we should be ready to admit their 
unauthenticity. The same applies to the teaching 
here imputed to Paul; but it remains to be proved 
that both Jesus and Paul did not at this time still 
retain precisely such ideas, crude as they seem to 
us. For there is abundant evidence that they domi- 
nated the thought of most Jews and Christians 
of that time, and such slight traces as appear in 
Paul’s later epistles of a less catastrophic type of 
doctrine are evidence, not so much that he did not 
at first hold the views characteristic of his age and 
people, as that he simply did not permit them to 
keep his mind in bondage, but outgrew them as 
the prospect of his own “departing to be with 
Christ ” drew nearer, while that of witnessing the 
wind-up of creation according to apocalyptic pro- 


248 THE STORY OF ST. PAUL % 


\ 
gramme became more remote.! As the author of \ 


the Thessalonian letter, even if a forger, expects 
Antichrist to “sit in the temple of God setting 
himself forth as God,” it is clear that he wrote be- 
fore the destruction of the temple in the year 70. 
He betrays no knowledge even of the insurrection 
of 66-70, which culminated in that destruction. 
The awful Neronic persecution, which brought Paul 
himself to the scaffold and Peter to impalement, 
struck the Church dumb with horror as they beheld 
the empire, to which they had looked as their natural 
protector against Jewish hatred, turning its whole 
power against them. From that time Rome becomes 


1 The conventional apocalyptic doctrine of the apostasy of the 
last times culminating in the triumph of Antichrist receives 
classic expression in 2 Esdras v. 9, vi. 24, 25, ix. 1-8, xvi. 18; Apoc. 
of Baruch, xxvii. 6,7, but is clearly reflected both in the Gospels 
and Revelation. That Paul shared it is manifest not only here, 
but in his discussion of the fate of Israel in Romans ix.—xi., where 
the hardening of Israel is something more than a matter of pre- 
sentexperience. ‘‘ Thismystery ”’ (Rom. xi.25) is the same spoken 
of in 2 Thess. ii. 7 as ‘‘ the mystery of lawlessness already work- 
ing.’? The Pastoral Epistles afford of course very dubious evi- 
_ dence; but in 2 Tim. iii. 8 the apocalyptic writing, The Repent- 
ance of Jannes and Jambres, seems to be accepted (by Paul ?) as “a 
seripture inspired of God and profitable,” and to be the immedi- 
ate source of his doctrine of the apostasy. In the apokryphon 
Jannes and Jambres are Pharaoh’s magicians, and play the part of 
the beast and the false prophet as agents of Antichrist in Reve- 
lation. They are swallowed up alive by the earth, but not before 
their ‘‘ repentance” and confession, which leads to the turning 
back of their dupes to the true faith. Cf. 1 Tim. iy. 1. 


LETTERS OF THE SECOND JOURNEY 249 


to Christian thought no longer protectress, but 
« Babylon the great, mother of harlots,” “ drunken 
with the blood of the saints and martyrs of Jesus ;” 
Nero is himself Antichrist, or “the beast” that 
parodies the claims of divine sonship, of dominion 
over the world, of death and resurrection — for 
popular superstition declared that Nero would rise 
again from the dead. But all this lies beyond the 
horizon of our Epistle. Rome, if not Claudius him- 
self,! is still the protecting, “ restraining” power. 
The temple is still standing. But to go back so 
far as this is to go back to Paul’s own time, a time 
when no unauthentic letter could easily be put in 
circulation. So that it seems altogether more rea- 
sonable to think of Paul himself as looking at this 
time for — 

‘‘ The revelation of the Lord Jesus from heaven with the 
angels of his power in flaming fire, rendering vengeance to 
them that know not God [Gentiles], and to them that hearken 
not to the Gospel of our Lord Jesus [unbelieving Jews]; 
men who shall pay the penalty of eternal destruction from 
the face of the Lord, and from the glory of his might, when 
he shall come to be glorified among his saints and to be 


wondered at among all believers [for our witness found be- 
lief among you]? in that day.” 


1 Hitzig conjectured that in the obscure allusion to a xatexav 
(mase.), which is also katexéy (neuter), a “ restraining ” man, or 
thing, by which nearly all agree that the Roman power is in some 
way meant, there is a play upon the name of the Emperor Claudius. 

2 The expressions of this passage are borrowed largely from Ps. 


250 THE STORY OF ST. PAUL 


True, we must look to Hnoch and 2 Esdras, 
the Apocalypse of Baruch and the Sibylline Ora- 
cles, rather than to the “ word of the Lord,” for at 
least the ultimate source of these conceptions, and 
so must we also for the picture of the coming of 
Antichrist which follows, wherein Paul is largely 
quoting! from some unknown apocalyptic writ- 
ing : — 

“Now, brethren, with regard to the coming of our Lord 
Jesus Christ and our gathering together to him, we pray you 
not to be hastily disturbed from your sober mind, nor dis- 
quieted by a spirit [speaking through prophets in the church 
assembly ],? or by a word [saying of Jesus], or by a letter 
purporting to come from us, to the effect that the day of the 
Lord is immediate. Let no one beguile youinany way. For 
first must come the apostasy [one of the stereotyped features 
of apocalypse], with the manifestation of the ‘Man of law- 
lessness,’ the ‘Son of perdition,’ the ‘Adversary, who uplifts 
himself over all that is called divine, or that is an object 
of worship, seating himself at length in the temple of God, 
giving himself out to be God.’ Do you not remember that I 
used to tell you this while I was still with you? Well, now 
you know what restrains him from being revealed before his 
proper time. For already the ‘mystery of lawlessness’ is at 
work. Only it cannot be manifested until he who at present 
restrains it is removed. Then shall the Lawless One be re- 


Ixyiii. (LXX.), which winds up @avyaords 6 beds ev Tots dotois abTod 
(‘God is wondered at among his saints”). Paul interjects the 
parenthetic clause to show wherein the prophecy is fulfilled. 

1 Verses 9 a and 10 } contain explanatory comments showing 
that the rest is quoted, as in i. 10. 

2 Cf. 1 Tim. iy. 1. 


LETTERS OF THE SECOND JOURNEY 251 


vealed, — whom the Lord Jesus shall slay with the breath of 
his mouth, and put down by his manifestation and appearing, 
the Lawless One whose manifestation is due to Satan’s power 
— with all his power and signs and lying wonders, and with 
all the deceit of iniquity for those who are destined to perish 
— because they did not accept the love of the truth for their 
salvation; therefore does God send them an impulse of error, 
so that they believe the falsehood — that all might be judged 
who believed not the truth, but delighted in iniquity.” 


Perhaps it is a lurid picture with which we take 
leave of St. Paul’s correspondence with Thessalo- 
nica, but we must remember that it is the brighter 
hope of deliverance which is Paul’s real message. 
It is “ Jesus which delivereth us from the wrath 
to come ;” the dark and lurid background is simply 
Jewish thought as it was without the features of 
divine compassion for the sinner and the Gentile. 
These curiosities of obsolete Jewish thought are use- 
ful to us only historically, as showing the atmos- 
phere in which Paul moved, the background against 
which the great principles he had imbibed from 
Jesus had to develop. 

We must turn now to the great letter wherein 
Paul takes up the chief battle of his life, one which 
reveals to us in the glare of conflict the deepest 
principles of the man and his faith. No wonder 
Luther called Galatians his bride, his Katharine 
von Bora. Without it the odds in the great battle 
of the Reformation would have been almost over- 


252° THE STORY OF ST. PAUL 

whelming against the right of private judgment ; 
churchly authority might almost have crushed the 
attempt to vindicate the divine right of the individ- 
ual conscience. 

I need not repeat the nature of the reports that 
came to Paul in Corinth as to the activity of the 
Judaizers in his rear. Our previous canvass of the 
situation has shown what it would have meant to 
Paul had they been really able to detach from him 
the loyalty of his Galatian churches, persuading 
them that Paul’s gospel was unduly lax, and Paul 
himself a mere subordinate whose authority could 
not bear comparison with those who had lived in 
actual intercourse with the Lord. The Judaizer’s 
case was plausible. What divine Scripture had 
Paul to appeal to, save the Law of Moses? And 
certainly on its face this seemed to directly oppose his 
teaching. What gospel authority had he to present, 
save Jesus, whom he had never known in the flesh? 
Luther and the Reformers had at least the authority 
of Sacred Scripture with which to offset the author- 
ity of Church and ecclesiastical tradition. Paul had 
both Scripture and ecclesiastical authority against 
him. And yet he not only convinced the Gentile 
world that his mission was by authority of God, 
and his interpretation of Jesus and the Gospel the 
true interpretation, rather than that of the personal 
disciples of the Christ; Paul even carried with him 


LETTERS OF THE SECOND JOURNEY 253 


these very disciples themselves. James and Cephas 
and John acknowledged the equal standing and au- 
thority of his apostleship and the truth of his gos- 
pel ; and what could the mother church do when its 
leaders had given in, save to yield also? Yield it 
did, therefore, with the exception of a minority of 
inflexible conservatives, left stranded at last, when, 
by the destruction of Jerusalem, the centre of gray- 
ity had irrevocably passed to the Gentile Church. 
The tremendous influence of this man cannot be ac- 
counted for merely by his superiority in training, 
education, and social standing over his Galilean 
predecessors, is not accounted for by his power of 
logic, nor by his almost superhuman energy and re- 
sistless activity. Nothing can account for it that 
disregards the evidence afforded in this “ thunder- 
bolt epistle,” the evidence of Paul’s overwhelming, 
burning conviction of immediate divine vocation. 
‘The very salutation blazes with indignant scorn 
of those who demanded the credentials of his apos- 
tleship. To the Thessalonians and Philippians he 
does not sign himself an “ Apostle.” Here, and in 
all subsequent epistles save to his beloved Mace- 
donians, he stands on his apostolic dignity. At the 
same time he demands a new significance for the 


rs 


title. It shall mean more than a matter of let- 


ters of commendation, ceremonies of ordination by 
church dignitaries, evidences of association even 


254 THE STORY OF ST. PAUL 


with Christ himself after the flesh: “Paul, an 
Apostle not from men, nor through a man, but 
through Jesus Christ and God the Father, who 
raised him from the dead.” That is one new feature 
of the salutation of this letter. It foreshadows a 
treatment of “ apostleship ” that will be a surprise 
to his detractors. The other special feature is the 
allusion to his gospel of the cross: “ Grace to you 
and peace from God, and from Jesus Christ, who 
gave himself for our sins to deliver us from this 
present evil world.” That foreshadows a presenta- 
tion of the doctrine of redemption that will leave 
no room for legalism. 

After this salutation Paul makes no pause for 
the usual courtesies of thanksgiving and prayer for 
the welfare in the Gospel of his correspondents, 
but plunges directly into sharpest rebuke : — 


“T marvel at you, that like renegades you are deserting 
to another gospel. There is no other. Men call me ‘man- 
pleaser,’ over-conciliatory. Hearken, then. I pronounce the 
man anathema — man, do I say, yes, angel from heayen — 
who presents to you any other way of salvation than that 
we preached.” 


With that Paul takes up the theme which is to 
occupy the whole epistle, the proof that his apostle- 
ship and his gospel are not from man. Jesus had 
startled the synagogues of Galilee by a proclama- 
tion “ with authority, and not as the scribes; ” he 


LETTERS OF THE SECOND JOURNEY 255 


had confounded the hierarchs who asked, “ By what 
authority doest thou these things ?” with the ques- 
tion, “The baptism of John, was it from heaven or 
of men?” So Paul now rescues the Church from 
the verge of relapse into the same traditionalism of 
scribe and ecclesiastic, by raising again the protest 
of the individual conscience which has heard the 
voice of the living God, and becomes the champion 
of the liberty of the faith. Paul now demands 
again whether the Gospel was “from heaven, or 
of men.” 

There are but two main divisions of the epistle in 
its doctrinal part. (1) The defense of the divine 
nature of Paul’s apostleship. This is demonstrated 
in the historical review we have already followed 
in comparison with Acts. We have, then, (2) the 
vindication of his gospel of salvation apart from 
the control of the Law, by argument (@) from ex- 
perience, and (6) from the Law itself. After that 
come (3) two chapters of practical exhortation, 
guarding against the perversion of his doctrine of 
freedom from the Law into mere license. 

Of these main divisions we need consider only 
the argument for freedom from the Law, and the 
practical section, since the story of Paul’s con- 
version, early missionary career, vindication at 
Jerusalem, and stand against Peter at Antioch is 
already familiar to us. 


256 THE STORY OF ST. PAUL 


At the beginning of chapter iii. Paul takes up 
his position against the Judaizers on the merits of 
the case. Their contention is for the prerogative of 
Israel. The Messianic inheritance is for “ Abraham 
and his seed.” The covenant of circumcision was 
given as a token that in Abraham and his seed all 
nations should be blessed; those from the Gentiles 
who become heirs with Israel should accept cireum- 
cision as the token of adoption, and bow to the 
yoke of the Law. 

Paul’s answer is first of all the appeal to experi- 


ence :! — 


“ When did the phenomena of tongues, prophecies, ecstatic 
utterances and miracles appear ? Was the outpouring of the 
Spirit an accompaniment of your evangelization by Paul, or 
of the proselyting efforts of the Judaizers? But the gifts of 
the Spirit are the very pledge and supreme evidence of the 
Messianic kingdom. They are the foretaste of that life which 
is to be, because the Spirit is itself the sin and death destroy- 
ing, the life-giving principle. Therefore the true ‘seed of 
Abraham’ is that which was constituted by the ‘hearing of 
faith’ which brought the Spirit. Not physical descent, not 
adoption by circumcision and acceptance of the Law, makes 
the ‘seed of Abraham’ in the real sense of the promise, but 
imitation of Abraham’s faith.” 


1 Acts is undoubtedly correct in presenting this as the argument 
which in every case overwhelms opposition in the early Church: 
“The Holy Ghost fell on them, even as on us at the beginning. 
If, then, God gave unto them the like gift as unto us, who was I, 
that I should withstand God?” Acts xi. 16-18; ef. ii, 14-21, viii. 
14-24, x. 4447, xv. 8. 


LETTERS OF THE SECOND JOURNEY 257 


«Moreover, this appears from the relation of Abraham and 
of us non-legalistic Christians to the Law respectively. Abra- 
ham’s blessing was pronounced on him for believing God — 
it was reckoned to him for righteousness. [In Romans Paul 
adds, ‘ while he was still uncircumcised.’] So we, like Abra- 
ham, have nothing but our trust in God as a basis for salva- 
tion. But as against the blessing pronounced on Abraham 
and this [spiritual] seed, Scripture pronounces a curse on 
those who are under the Law. It says, ‘Cursed is every one 
that continueth not in all things that are written in the Book 
of the Law to do them.’ And to do them all is impossi- 
ble. There would be no salvation possible for any man if this 
divine curse had not been removed. But this curse was 
removed ; and here is the very heart and substance of the 
Gospel, which the Judaizers make valueless. Christ became 
himself accursed under the Law—the very mode of his 
death is significant — to remove it from us, so that the bless- 
ing of Abraham might come upon all who have faith, irre- 
spective of race; and so you Gentiles might receive the 
promised Messianic gift of the Spirit through simple believ- 
ing. 

“ But of course my opponents will say, What, then, was the 
use of the Law? They will say I make the Law of none 
effect, as I accuse them of making the cross of none effect. 
Let us see if that is so. I maintain that the Law cannot be 
a condition of the promise, because what God promised un- 
conditionally to Abraham he could not, even if he were a 
man, impose conditions upon 430 years after. What, then, 
is the Law? It is a disciplinary arrangement imposed to 
prepare the heir for what he was to receive. The heir is the 
new humanity, which collectively forms the body of Christ. 
This is indicated in the very expression ‘seed,’ a collective 
singular. But the righteousness of faith, which was Abra- 
ham’s, could not be produced in humanity without a disci- 


258 THE STORY OF ST. PAUL 


plinary dispensation of law. Without law there is no con- 
sciousness of sin. Without having struggled to attain a 
standard above himself a man cannot have the knowledge 
of his weakness and need that are indispensably prerequisite 
to faith. There would be nothing but self-righteousness, 
‘boasting,’ Pharisaism. So the Law was given that sin 
might abound. Jews, most of all, were shut up under it as 
a hard taskmaster. Through angels, and by the hand of 
Moses as mediator, a multitude of ordinances were imposed 
upon them, not life-giving as claimed, but on the contrary 
calculated to make men feel the sting of death, which is sin.! 
And as the Jews were thus placed under the tutelage of 
angels, so the Gentiles also were permitted to serve the Ele- 
mental Beings ? of the world, which control sun and moon and 
stars, the revolution of the seasons, and the order of outward 
nature. For nature’s order is symbolized in all religious 
feasts and calendar systems. Until the time of redemption 
was ripe, and God was ready to send forth his Christ as the 
head of a new humanity, Jews and Gentiles alike were 
under law, the former explicitly, the latter implicitly; just 
as children, until the time appointed by their father, are put 


1 Here Paul is obviously speaking from the standpoint of his 
own very exceptional religious experience. The practical difficulty 
which prevented Paulinism from ever gaining real acceptance in 
the Church was right here. Other men had no such experience of 
deadly conflict, of the Law as an impracticable, yet inexorable, 
requirement of God. Every Jew, above all, regarded the Law as 
his delight and rejoicing, his assurance of favor with God. Hence 
the Pauline explanation that it was superimposed to increase not 
only the sense of sin, but sin itself in its heinousness, seemed to 
the Jew an extravagant and blasphemous paradox. To the Gen- 
tile Christian it was a scarcely intelligible strife “‘about words 
and names and their Law.” 

2 See Encycl. Bibl. s. v. ‘‘ Elements.” 


LETTERS OF THE SECOND JOURNEY 259 


under the contro] of mentors and guardians, who impose ar- 
bitrary rules as they see fit. 

“Such is the function of the Law. But now that faith is 
come, we are no longer under a tutor. For ye are all sons of 
God, through faith in Christ Jesus. For all of you who had 
yourselves baptized into Christ did put on Christ, as an in- 
corporating being. You became a single new man, a new 
social organism.? There is no place for distinction of Jew or 


1 The treatment of the Mosaic ritual as a “ worship of angels” 
(Kerygma Petri, Apology of Aristides, Ep. to Diognetus, etc.) in 
Gal. iii. 19, iv. 1-11 (where the orotyeia Tod Kéopov are to be com- 
pared with the same angelic objects of reverence in Col. ii. 8, 20), 
together with the repeated warning against magic (iii. 1, v. 20), 
suggests that even in Galatia the Judaizing heresy was not of the 
pure Pharisaic-nomistie type, but exhibited something already of 
that bastard Judaism of the “strolling Jews, exorcists,” of Ephe- 
sus, to which Harnack has given the name “ syncretistic Judaism.” 
Tté led the way to Gnosticism, treating the Law like a book of 
spells, to control angelic powers. 

2 Weshall have occasion hereafter, especially in connection with 
Ephesians, to give further consideration to this great Pauline con- 
ception of the new humanity as a single organism, the unio mys- 
tica in Christ. The idea is obviously not Jewish, but Stoic in its 
roots. Seneca is only transmitting a cosmopolitanism which Plu- 
tarch attributes to Alexander himself (intrusted with a divine 
mission to “reconcile the whole world”) when he writes: “ All 
this which thou seest, in which are comprised things human and 
divine, is one. We are members of a vast body. Nature made us 
kin, when she produced us from the same things and to the same 
ends.” “ Nature bids me assist men ; and whether they be bond 
or free, whether gentlefolk or freedmen, whether they enjoy 
liberty as a right, or as a friendly gift, what matter ? Wherever 
a man is, there is room. for doing good.” “ This mind may belong 
as well to a Roman knight as to a freedman, as to a slave; for 
what is a Roman knight, a freedman or a slave ? Names which 


260 THE STORY OF ST. PAUL 


Greek, of bond or free, of male or female. You became one 
man in Christ Jesus, and as such the ‘seed of Abraham,’ 
the heirs according to the promise.” 

In this third chapter, which I have thus para- 
phrased, Paul has outlined his whole conception of 
the pre-Christian dispensation, Abrahamic and Mo- 
saic. Of course the argument has special applica- 
tion against Jewish pretensions, and must not be 
judged as if Paul were outlining an abstract system 
of religion for all time. We must make our own 
theory of the relation of law and grace, sin and 
atonement, faith and works, in the light of the great 
principles Paul applies. But what a magnificent 
example of mingled freedom and loyalty is his ap- 
plication of the example and teaching, the life and 
death, of Jesus to the special problem of his time. 
Different as this teaching is in form from the Ser- 
had their origin in ambition or injustice.” Lightfoot is right when, 
after citing example after example, both from Seneca and his pre- 
decessors of this Stoic cosmopolitanism, he asks: ‘‘ Did St. Paul 
speak quite independently of this Stoic imagery, when the vision 
of a nobler polity rose before him, the revelation of a city not 
made with hands eternal in the heayens? Is there not a strange 
coincidence in his language — a coincidence only the more strik- 
ing because it clothes an idea in many respects very different ? ” 
Cosmopolitanism is the last thing Paul would learn from his Jew- 
ish antecedents, it was strange doctrine even to the elder Apos- 
tles. And yet it was.involved in the Spirit of Christ. Paul has 
the merit of infusing with imperishable life what in Stoicism was 
but a barren ideal. And the life which he gave it was the prin- 


ciple of self-denying service as the unifying bond of the social 
organism, the new Law of Christ. 


LETTERS OF THE SECOND JOURNEY 261 


mon on the Mount and the Parable of the Prodigal 
Son, after all it is Paul, and not the elder Apostles, 
who fights the real battle of the Gospel of Jesus. 

But Paul is not done yet with his argument. In 
chapter four he reiterates his doctrine of adoption 
by the Spirit, or coming of age into the filial re- 
lation with God, to hold up in contrast with it the 
self-enslaving present conduct of the Galatians. 
Finally, to make his scorn of their present leader- 
ship still more pointed, he turns upon them one of 
the contrasts of Genesis, wherein Jewish pride had 
recorded its sense of superiority to Ishmael the 
elder stock. I will paraphrase again : — 

“ Now what I mean is this. The condition of subservience 
to Law is a slavish one. Even the heir of a great estate 
until he comes of age is in a servile position, seeing his pro- 
perty administered by stewards, and his own actions directed 
by guardians. Such was our relation hitherto to the Elemen- 
tal Beings in present control of the creation, the beings 
worshipped in all ceremonial religions ; for even the Jewish 
religion with its lunar calendar, its days and months and 
seasons and years, clearly involves ‘ordinances of angels.’ 
But now we have attained majority. We have come into the 
relation of sons through the work of Christ. The Spirit of 
the Son sent forth by God into our hearts cries in the prayers 
uttered in a tongue, Abba, Abba, that is, ‘Father.’ So that 


thou art no longer in subserviency, but a son, and if a son, 
then an heir to the estate of God, that is the world.” 
1 The Messianic inheritance is another conception which needs 


much further development in the light of contemporary thought. 
Suffice it for the present that Paul distinctly says that Abraham 


262 THE STORY OF ST. PAUL 


“ And now, forsooth, you who have been rescued from this 
condition of pupilage wish to turn back from your condition 
of freedom, and heirship, and direct filial relations with God, 
and to be in bondage over again to beings which by nature 
are no gods! Nothing else is meant by this observance of 
Sabbaths and new moons, Mosaic feasts and Sabbatical yeare, 
which you have taken up. It is homage paid to angelic or 
elemental Beings, temporarily placed by God in charge of 
the estate of creation and in the direction of nations, but 
which have neither power nor property in their own right. 
They are weak and beggarly. Christ alone is the heir, and 
you are joint heirs with him. You should rather look to sit- 
ting in judgment with him on their administration.+ 

“Oh, the pity of this change! Instead of the ardor of your 
love and gratitude and zeal, when at my former coming 
you would have plucked out your eyes to give me in return 
for the gospel I preached, there is now coldness toward 


was made “ heir of the world” (Rom. iy. 18) ; that he also declares 
to the Corinthians that “all things are yours,’’ in particular “the 
world; ” that he appeals to Scripture in proof that “ All things 
are to be put in subjection under the feet of Christ,” where the 
passage employed is the same (Gen. i. 26-28; Ps. viii. 6) to which 
apocalyptic writers of both synagogue and church appealed as 
proof that “God created the world on behalf of Israel ” (2 Esdr. 
vi. 55, 59, Assumptio Mosis, i. 12-14, Apoc. of Baruch, xiv. 18 f., 
xy. 7, xxi. 24), or “on behalf of the Church” (Hermas, Vis. ii. 
4,1, Mand. xii. 4; Justin, Apol. i. 10, ii. 4. 5, Dial. xli.; Ireneus, 
Her. v. 29.1, ete.). See R. H. Charles, Assumptio Mosis, i. 14, note, 
and my article ‘““Stephen’s Speech ’’ in Yale Bicentennial Contri- 
butions, pp. 242-244, 

1 The consideration is added from 1 Cor. vi. 3, as throwing 
needful light on a portion of Paul’s cosmology very ill understood 
in modern times. In Enoch the judgment of the angels (seventy 
shepherds) for their administration of the world is antecedent to 
the general judgment: 


LETTERS OF THE SECOND JOURNEY 263 


me, now I am regarded as your ‘enemy.’ The new-comers. 
assume airs of exclusiveness and superiority to make you 
cringe to them, and I the author of your spiritual being am 
robbed of my children, suffering the pangs of motherhood in 
vain. 

“But hearken to an allegory from the Law, since you crave 
to be under it. According to the Law, Abraham had two 
sons, one born according to the flesh, the elder son, one later, 
born according to the Spirit by the promise of God, when 
only the faith of his aged parents availed to overcome the 
laws of nature. If the promise be indeed to the seed of 
Abraham according to the flesh, then who is the legal heir ? 
— Ishmael, the son of Hagar the slave-woman. But ifit be, as 
I have shown, according to the spirit, and ‘they who are of 
faith are blessed with faithful Abraham,’ then who are they 
that correspond to Ishmael and his slave mother, whose very 
name recalls the mountain of the Law? Surely Hagar and 
Ishmael are the Jerusalem that now is and her sons, that per- 
secute us Christians, as legend declares that Ishmael per- 
secuted Isaac. This is the seed according to the flesh. Sarah 
and her-child Isaac born by a ‘word of promise’ is the 
heavenly, coming Jerusalem, the seat of Christ our Lord, the 
place of our citizenship, capital of the kingdom that is to be. 
Long has this daughter of Zion been barren and desolate, 
but now, like the new Jerusalem of Isaiah’s day, she is al- 
ready teeming with a multitude of children. We, brethren, 
as Isaac was, are children of promise, not of the flesh, nor of 
the will of man. It is they who boast their fleshly relation to 
Abraham that are the Ishmaelites. Howbeit, what saith the 
Scripture ? ‘Cast out the slave-woman and her son: for 
the son of the slave-woman shall not inherit with the son 
of the free-woman.’ Wherefore, brethren, we are not children 
of a slave-woman but of the free. For freedom did Christ 
set us free; be not entangled again in a yoke of bondage.” 


264 THE STORY OF ST. PAUL 


I need scarcely paraphrase the practical appeal 
of this epistle. Read in the light of our knowledge 
of Paul and his circumstances, it is tremulous with 
vivid emotion. Its key-note after all is not polemic, 
but the note of unity. Paul is peremptory and un- 
eompromising where the principle of salvation by 
faith apart from works seems to him endangered. 
But in chapter five he has no sooner made it clear 
that faith is either all or nothing, that to resort to 
circumcision and works of the law to supplement it 
is simply a confession that one has no faith, than 
he begins to warn against the opposite error. To 
acknowledge no intermediary between us and God, 
no law but his pleasure, is far from laxity. Our 
liberty was given by endowment with the Spirit. To 
conduct one’s self according to the selfish impulses 
of the flesh would be to deny the very source of 
this liberty, for the impulses of Spirit and flesh are 
contrary one to the other. And the first and high- 
est impulse of the Christ-Spirit is that “ through 
love we be servants one to another.” The law of 
love is the law of life ; the predatory spirit is self- 
destructive. 

There is, then, in a sense, a “ Law of Christ,” 
for where his Spirit is, there is purification of self 
and reciprocal kindness and self-denying service 
to others. The leaders help the weak, those who are 
taught support those who teach, the spirit of meek- 


¢ 


LETTERS OF THE SECOND JOURNEY 265 


ness in those appointed to authority banishes strife 
and vainglory, love and mutual helpfulness become 
anew bond of social order. These are Paul’s in- 
structions to leaders and subordinates alike. Then 
he resumes his whole exhortation : — 


“Tn all that has been said, let it not be understood that the 
law of retribution is set aside. A man is indeed not saved 
by any righteous works he can do; but it is falsehood to 
say that then the evil-doer can mock at God. It is still true, 
for all the forgiving grace, that each must reap what he has 
sown; if to the flesh, then corruption, which is its fruit; if 
to the Spirit, eternal life, for life is the very dowry of the 
Spirit.” 

So he closes. One final paragraph he writes 
with his own big scrawling hand, humorously com- 
paring it to the neat chirography of the scribe’s 
preceding lines. Those who would have them cir- 
cumcised seek the outward show. For Paul there 
is but one thing glorious —that cross of which 
these men appear to be ashamed. By it the world 
has been crucified to him and he to the world. 
Since Calvary, neither circumcision nor uncireumci- 
sion is anything; but a new creation. Peace, then, 
and mercy, upon such as walk by this rule, and 
upon the spiritual Israel — the Israel of God. 


LECTURE VIII 


LETTERS OF THE THIRD MISSIONARY 
JOURNEY 


It is no very long interval which we pass over in 
proceeding to the letters of the Third Missionary 
Journey. Paul has transferred his headquarters 
from Corinth to Ephesus, the great metropolis at 
which he was probably aiming at the beginning of 
the second period of his missionary career. Before 
definitely settling there, he revisited Antioch, and 
made a tour of confirmation through Galatia, whose 
results must have been favorable, since in 1 Cor. 
xvi. 1 he makes the arrangements he had established 
in Galatia for the collections a model for Corinth. 
The correspondence, from which four letters of 
Paul are preserved to us wholly or in part, began 
a year or more after Paul’s return to Ephesus from 
this tour, at a time when he himself had gone 
through many trying experiences in Ephesus, and 
the church in Corinth, on its part, had had consid- 
erable growth, not in all respects for the better, - 
under Apollos. It was on the recommendation of 
Aquila and Prisca that this Alexandrian convert 
had gone from Ephesus to take Paul’s place ia 


LETTERS OF THE THIRD JOURNEY 267 


Corinth,! but at the time of writing Paul’s second 
letter, our 1 Corinthians, he had returned to Ephe- 
sus, and was with Paul. Our 1 Corinthians, I say, 
was Paul’s second letter, for he refers to a pre- 
ceding letter in 1 Cor. v. 9. Paul’s third letter, 
referred to in 2 Cor. ii. 4 as “ written out of much 
affliction and anguish of heart,” is now widely re- 
cognized to be embodied, at least in part, in the 
last four chapters of our 2 Corinthians, so that 
2 Cor. i.—ix. constitutes Paul’s fourth letter in the 
series, later copyists having attached the substance 
of the third letter (2 Cor. x.—xiii.) at the end, with- 
out a separate title. The letters written to Paul 
from the church have disappeared; but we can 
form some notion of their contents from Paul’s 
citations. 

Apparently the correspondence began with a let- 
ter from Paul, calling for stricter discipline in the 
church in the matter of sexual morality. Reports 
of a scandalous case in Corinth had reached him in 
Ephesus (perhaps through Apollos), and he had 
written demanding that they “have no company 
with fornicators.”? The demand, however, had 

1 Acts xviii. 27. The Western text has the interesting addition: 
“ But certain Corinthians who were tarrying in Ephesus and had 
heard him [Apollos], besought him to go over with them to their 
country. And when he had consented, the Ephesians wrote to 


the disciples in Corinth to receive the man.” 
2 1 Cor. v. 9. 


268 THE STORY OF ST. PAUL 


been made in such general terms that the Corin- 
thians in their reply could plead that his require- 
ment was impracticable, they would have to leave 
the world entirely to carry it out.1 To which Paul 
answered that he had no reference to outsiders. 
They should excommunicate a member guilty of 
immorality.” 

There is some reason to think that this first letter 
of the correspondence has partially survived. Its 
general purport is already clear; moreover, I have 
indicated that 2 Corinthians, which seems to have 
been put in circulation considerably later than 1 Co- 
rinthians,? contains the remaining Pauline material 
of the church archives, in more or less disorder. This 
is true not only of the last four chapters, but of 
six verses which intervene between 2 Cor. vi. 13 
and vii. 2 without any recognizable sense connec- 
tion. In fact, they break the connection of what 
Paul is there saying in a very striking way. He 
writes, “Our heart is enlarged toward you, O Co- 
rinthians ; now, for a recompense in like kind, be ye 
also enlarged, . . . open your hearts to us.” Be- 
tween the clause “be ye also enlarged” and the 
clause “ open your hearts to us ” are interjected six 
verses on the subject of the relations of the sexes 


1 1 Cor. v. 10. 2 1 Cor. v. 11. 
8 Clement of Rome, writing to the Corinthians in 95 A. D., 
speaks of Paul’s “ Epistle ” to them as if he knew of only one. 


LETTERS OF THE THIRD JOURNEY 269 


in Corinth. We are strongly reminded of what 
Paul says of the contents of his first letter, and why 
its demand was treated by the Corinthians as im- 
practicable. These are the interjected verses : — 


“ Have no conjugal relations, incongruous as they must be, 
with unbelievers. For what partnership can exist between 
righteousness and iniquity, between light and darkness, or 
what has Christ in common with Beliar (Antichrist) ? What 
part has a believer with an unbeliever, and what concord has 
God’s temple with idols ? For we constitute a temple of the 
living God; even as God said: ‘ I will dwell in them and walk in 
them. And I will be their God and they shall be my people.’ 
Therefore (to quote another Scripture) ‘Come out from the 
midst of them and be separate, saith the Lord, and touch 
nothing unclean, and I will welcome you with favor: So will 
I be to you a father, and you shall be to me sons and daugh- 
ters, saith the Lord Almighty.’ Since, then, we have these 
promises, my beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all pollu- 
tions outward or inward, making our holiness perfect in the 
fear of God.” 


Remembering what demands were made by the 
Jewish Christians of their Gentile brethren on the 
score of “the pollutions of idols,” and how they 
considered the “many to be defiled” by mere con- 
tact with one such “ Esau,” 1 we need not wonder 
that Pauline believers in Corinth should protest 
against language like that of 2 Cor. vi. 14—vii. 1, 
that it would require them to leave the world en- 
tirely. If this paragraph on the sexual relations at 


1 See above, p. 133. 


270 THE STORY OF ST. PAUL 


Corinth which so strangely interrupts the connec- 
tion of 2 Cor. vi. 13 with vii. 2 is really a remnant 
of the lost first letter, we can well understand why 
Paul takes this subject up first, after his rebuke of 
the dissensions reported by ‘them of the household 
of Chloe,” and in just the way that he does, in 
1 Cor. v.—vii., before proceeding to answer the new 
inquiries. 

At any rate, the Corinthians replied, as we know, 
and at considerable length, taking up not only the 
whole question of marriage, in particular conjugal 
relations between believers and heathen, but the 
whole list of questions principally in debate at the 
time, to all of which Paul gives his answers seria- 
tim. From the point where Paul begins in 1 Cor. 
vii. 1, “ Now concerning the things whereof ye 
wrote,” we can follow the letter of inquiry para- 
graph by paragraph in Paul’s reply. And as Paul’s 
reply throws light on the Corinthians’ letter of in- 
quiry, so, more dimly, even as the dark disk of the 
moon is seen “in the arms of the new” by reflec- 
tion of earth-light, Paul’s first letter itself can be 
traced in outline through the inquiries. It certainly 
dealt with questions of sex and marital relations 
between believers and unbelievers. Apparently it 
used the figure of the body as “a temple of God.” 1 

But Paul had other things to say to them, which 


1 Cf. 1 Cor. vi. 19 (“ Know ye not,” ete.) with 2 Cor. vi. 16. 


LETTERS OF THE THIRD JOURNEY 271 


to his mind took precedence in importance over an- 
swering their questions. The first six chapters of 
1 Corinthians are devoted to these: (1) in chapters 
i—iy. the conditions of factiousness which Paul has 
learned about from a family recently come from 
Corinth ; (2) in chapters v., vi., the scandalous lax- 
ity of discipline of which he continues to hear, and 
which now manifests itself not only in disregard of 
his former demand for the excommunication of the 
sexually immoral, but in litigation between Chris- 
tians before heathen tribunals. This practice the 
Apostle regards as disgracing the church. We have 
only time barely to touch upon Paul’s rebuke of their 
factiousness, passing thence to a few of his replies 
to their most important questions, and disregarding 
all the rest. 

There were some in the church at Corinth who 
had begun to speak of themselves as adherents “ of 
Peter,’ and some who called themselves adherents 
“of Christ” in an invidious sense, though just 
what sense is obscure. There were also personal 
adherents “of Paul,” among whom the authors of 
the letter of inquiry must have classed themselves ; 
for they boast of their fidelity to his instructions, 
and make quite too unqualified an application of 
well-known Pauline principles. Finally, there were 
personal adherents “ of Apollos;” for Apollos also 


1 1 Cor. xi. 1. 


272 - THE STORY OF ST. PAUL 


had won a great following for himself by his Alex- 
andrian, philosophizing type of doctrine, to which 
indeed Paul has no objection, any more than he 
feels jealousy of the popularity of his successor. 
So far is he from this that he urges Apollos, who 
had probably left Corinth before Paul’s first admo- 
nition,! to return to Corinth. Apollos was doubt- 
less wise in declining. But while Paul has no 
objection to Apollos’ somewhat speculative type of 
doctrine, and intimates rather that he himself 
would have preached similar “ wisdom,” if he had 
regarded them as prepared for it, he does vehe- 
mently deprecate the factious, self-exalting, divisive 
spirit which is evinced in those who raise the ery, 
“Tam of Apollos,” as much as in the other parti- 
sans. Accordingly he discusses this divisiveness 
under application to himself and Apollos only? 
dropping from the start all consideration of the 
Petrinists and the Christ-party, because his own 
entire sympathy with Apollos will set their factious 
emulation in the more vivid light of reprehension. 
It would let in a flood of light upon the history 
of early Christian thought if we knew wherein the 
doctrine of Apollos, the learned Jew from Alex- 
1 Paul would hardly have written in the manner described 
(1 Cor. vy. 9) if Apollos had still been in charge. More probably 
it was through the coming of Apollos that Paul learned the facts 


which prompted this somewhat peremptory letter. 
2 1 Cor. iv. 6. 


LETTERS OF THE THIRD JOURNEY 273 


andria, mighty in the Scriptures, differed from 
Paul’s. Certainly Apollos cannot have been igno- 
rant of the Logos doctrine of Philo, the great phi- 
losopher of Hellenistic Judaism. Philo must have 
been to Apollos what Gamaliel was to Paul. Paul 
found in Baruch,! Sirach,? and the Book of Wis- 
dom? some of the noblest elements of Greek mysti- 
cism cast in Pharisean mould. In its hypostasis or 
personalized conception of the Wisdom of God he 
found the best expression for his own conception 
of Christ as preéxistent spirit, the medium of both 
creation and revelation in the past, as well as of 
humanity’s present redemption * and ultimate glori- 
fication in a new spiritual and eternal social order. 
Apollos may not have been the introducer of the 
Greek term “ Logos,” for the Palestinian-Hellen- 
istic “ Wisdom,” but he must have found in the 
Alexandrian hypostasis, which is Philo’s adapta- 
tion of the Heraclitean doctrine of the Logos of | 
God,® immanent, pervasive Reason, the medium of 

1 Baruch iii. 28-37; cf. Rom. x. 6, 7. 

2 Eeelus. xxiv. 1-22. 

8 Wisdom i. 6, "7, vii. 22-30, viii. 3, 4, x. 15, ete. 

* Tt is the noblest attribute of the Palestino-Hellenistie hypo- 
stasis Wisdom, that in distinction from the Greek, it represents the 
redemptive agency of God. Prov. viii. 1-21, ix. 3-6; Wisd. vi. 13. 

5 Heraclitus was a native of Ephesus. The opening lines of his 
Philosophy of Nature, describing the Logos of God and human 


incapacity to receive it, remind one of the Prologue of John: 
“The law of things is a law of Universal Reason (Logos), but 


274 THE STORY OF ST. PAUL 


creation, revelation, and redemption, a kindred, if 
not an identical idea. As we see the two learned 
Jews working side by side in their common cause 
in Ephesus, in “ the school of Tyrannus,” the pupil 
of Gamaliel saturated with the ideas of Tarsus, 
the home of Greek Stoicism, and the pupil of Philo 
saturated with the Alexandrian Logos doctrine, we 
are not surprised that Ephesus should appear a 
generation later as the home of the greatest school 
of Christian theological thought. The ideas of 
Paul and Apollos will have harmonized and 
strengthened one another as the Christological 
Epistles and the Johannine Epistles and Gospel 
harmonize and supplement one another. 

But Paul had been wiser than Apollos in the 
use made at Corinth of his speculative ideas. He 
knew the craving of the Jew for signs and of the 
Greek for wisdom, but had determined among 
them to know only the story of the cross, and to let 
Christ himself appear, as he is, both the Power of 
God and the Wisdom of God.! In their very eall- 


most men live as though they had an individual Reason (Logos) 
of their own.” Cf. Jn. i. 1-5, x.—xiii. 

1 The use of the words seems to be technical. Advayuis and 
cola are the two modes of divine manifestation, and are adopted 
from the start, in the current theosophy, as names for personal- 
ized abstractions. Thus Simon Magus was given out to be that 
dvvauis of God which is called MeydAn. In Lk. xxi. 26 the 
duvdueis that are in the heavens totter to their fall at the coming 


_ 


LETTERS OF THE THIRD JOURNEY 275 


ing God had chosen the foolish things of the world 
to put to shame the wise, and weak things to put 
to shame the mighty. Christ is not commended by 
the marvel of miracles, nor the subtlety of philo- 
sophie systems setting him forth. There is a power 
of God; but it is inward: the in-working of the 
life-giving Spirit. There is a wisdom of God; but 
it also is inward. It consists in our participation 
in the mind of Christ. For just as man’s own con- 
sciousness instructs him in the things of a man, so 
those who partake of God’s Spirit are admitted to 
a perception of even the deep things of God. Ina 
sense they are admitted to the self-consciousness of 
the Creator himself, so as to know the things he 
created to be ours.! So among adepts Paul is able 


of Christ. In Ephesians and Colossians we shall hear much of the 
“Suyduers in the heavenly regions.’ Similarly with the term 
copia. We have seen how Paul is influenced by the book called 
Wisdom of Solomon. In Lk. xi. 49 the utterance of Wisdom 
personified, from some current writing of the Wisdom literature, 
is placed without more ado in the mouth of Jesus himself. What 
“the Wisdom of God” says is Jesus’ saying. Of course we know 
how large a part the emanation Sophia plays in all Gnostic sys- 
tems and among the early fathers, where the term is used of 
Christ as synonymous with Logos and interchangeably with it, so 
that the greatest sanctuary of the Greek-Christian world bears to 
this day the name “ Church of St. Sophia.” But in the Johannine 
writings the word never appears. By the end of the century 
Gnostic use had brought it into ill repute, and the fourth evan- 
gelist adopts instead the Alexandrian or Philonic title Logos.” 
1 Cf. Wisdom vii. 17-22, viii. 4, with 1 Cor. ii. 10-12. 


276 THE STORY OF ST. PAUL 


to develop his knowledge of God’s foreordaining 
purpose, a great hidden mystery, concealed even 
from the angelic powers which (temporarily) rule 
the world. They know not the mystery of their 
own origin,! because they do not share the spirit of - 
adoption, and are not sons, but servants. They are 
destined to annihilation, as enemies of Christ, for 
the crucifixion was really their work. But through 
the Spirit of God, which we have as sons, God has 
revealed the significance of his creative and re- 
demptive providence, glories to come, which in the 
words of the Apocalyptic writing? are described 
as “ Things which eye saw not, and ear heard not, 
which came not up in the imagination of man, 
whatsoever things God prepared for them that love 
him.” 

“So there is room for both planting and watering in the 
ministry. I put in the seed, Apollos nourished it. But the 


1 So in Assumptio Mosis, i. 12-14, the hiding of the mystery of 
God’s purpose in creation is to confound the speculations of the 
Gentiles. God revealed the true answer to the question why and 
how the world was created to Moses: “He created the world 
on behalf of his people” (referring to Gen. i. 26). So Secrets of 
Enoch, xxiv. 3 (see edition of R. H. Charles, with comments on pp. 
xxii and xli), where the angels vainly strive to learn the mystery 
of their origin, and 1 Pet. i. 12, “ which [things the promised glory 
of the saints] angels desire to look into.” 

2 Paul is quoting an unknown “Scripture.” Origen found the 
citation in a work known to him as the Apocalypse of Elias. 
This work has disappeared, at least in its early form. 


ey = 


LETTERS OF THE THIRD JOURNEY 277 


harvest depends on God, who gives the vital power of 
growth. The new commonwealth of God is a temple built 
of spiritual materials. One lays the first course of stones, 
another builds on it. The relative worth of what I furnished 
and what Apollos is something only the judgment-day can 
reveal. For you the one important thing is the foundation, 
which is the story of Jesus as I told it. Instead of quarrel- 
ling about the various parts of the superstructure, to the 
injury of the building itself, you ought to realize the value 
of the fundamentals. For the leaders whom you invidi- 
ously compare, Paul and Apollos and Cephas, are yours in 
common. I will not say Christ is yours in common, but 
rather you are under Christ in common, and Christ is under 
God. In this unity the world belongs to you, and life with 
all it can give, and death with all it can give, present and 
future ; but not by the spirit of envy and emulation, only 
in the Spirit of Christ.” 

The rebuke concludes with the promise to send 
Timothy to regulate affairs and to come himself if 
possible. 

I must pass over the rebuke of lax discipline 
and the first question raised by the letter of in- 
quiry taken up in chapter vil. on sexual relations. 
Chapters viii—x. have the most vivid historical in- 
terest, because the question raised was regarding 
“things sacrificed to idols,’! and whether or not 
those who demanded abstinence had a right to 
require it. Manifestly Paul has told them nothing 

1 Note the constant collocation, “fornication and idolothuta.” 


These are the pollutions of the Gentiles nat’ etoxnv. Cf. Rev. ii 
14, 20. 


7 


of the Jerusalem decrees. The inquirers are clearly 
appealing to Paul’s principle (twice quoted), “ All 
things are lawful.” Another party designated “ the 
weak,” probably they “of Peter,” are more scru- 


278 THE STORY OF ST. PAUL 


pulous. But there are also some who deny that 
Paul is an Apostle, and demand that he be brought 
to trial regarding the liberty which he claims. He 
digresses for a brief ‘defence to them that would 
put me on trial.” As for the inquirers, we have 
already seen the ground Paul took, qualifying the. 
principle of unrestricted liberty by the comple- 
mentary principle of consideration for the more 
scrupulous. As an example of Paul’s correspond- 
ence, I cannot do better than transcribe the begin- 
ning of chapter vili., employing the modern device 
of quotation marks for the passages which he cites 
from the letter of inquiry : — 


“Now concerning meats from idol offerings: [You say] 
‘We know that we all have knowledge.’ [Very well, but] 
knowledge puffs up; love builds up. If any man thinks he 
knows, it is a sign that his knowledge is not of the right 
kind. But if a man loves God, it does imply knowledge. 
Well, then, concerning the eating of meats from idol offer- 
ings, you continue : ‘We know that no idol is anything in 
the world, and that there is no God but one. For though 
there be that are called gods, whether in heaven or on earth, 
as there doubtless are, gods many and world-masters many, 
yet so far as we are concerned there is but one God, the 
Father, and but one world-master, Jesus Christ, by means of 
whom all things came into existence, including ourselves.’ 


LETTERS OF THE THIRD JOURNEY 279 


[Did the Corinthians learn their Logos doctrine of Paul, or 
of Apollos? At any rate, this primitive cosmological Chris- 
tology which they advance as a sample of their gnosis is 
highly interesting. But let us see how Paul comments on 
it.]| Howbeit all men are not gifted with your gnosis [in- 
sight], but some, through accustomed association with the 
idol, eat as of something offered to an idol, and their con- 
science, holding such scruples, is polluted. [Continuing, then, 
from your letter] ‘But meat will not commend us to God: 
neither if we eat not are we the worse ; nor if we eat are we 
the better.’ All very well, only see to it lest this liberty of 
yours become a stumbling-block to the scrupulous. For if 
one sees you with your gnosis, sitting at meat in an idol’s 
temple, will not he be emboldened against his conscientious 
scruples to eat idolothuta? So through your gnosis, he that is 
weak is led to perdition, the brother for whom Christ died !” 


The significant thing in this noble answer of 
Paul to those who were pleading his own prin- 
ciples of freedom through knowledge of God and 
Christ from superstitious scruples, is the way in 
which he makes the law of love a check upon the 
sense of superiority and the consequent division so 
apt to appear where men feel themselves emanci- 
pated by new enlightenment. It anticipates the 
burden of 1 John. Unloving knowledge is not the 
true knowledge of God. “ Knowledge puffs up; 
love builds up.” 

_I must pass over the inquiry of chapter xi! 

1 It is accompanied by another interesting quotation from the 


letter of inquiry : “ Now I praise you that ye ‘remember me in all 
things, and hold fast the traditions [that is, the forms of church 





280 THE STORY OF ST. PAUL 


about matters of good order in the church, the 
place and demeanor of the women, and the pro- 
prieties to be observed at the love-feast and sacra- 
ment, to come to another section in which one of 
the great Pauline principles is exemplified. 

We are all familiar with the great Hymn to 
Love of the thirteenth chapter, and I scarcely 
hope to add to its significance in our devotional 
use. But we shall understand it better, we shall 
get new insight into the grand principles that lie 
behind it, if we read it once historically in its con- 
nection with chapters xii. and xiy., and against its 
background of Corinthian self-satisfaction in what 
they regarded as the most remarkable manifesta- 
tions of the Spirit. 

The section is devoted in Paul’s methodical way 
to the charismata, or “ spiritual gifts,” that is, the 
phenomena of “tongues,” ‘ prophecies,” “ mira- 
cles,” exorcisms, and the other endowments ser- 
viceable to the brotherhood, in which the church 
saw the outpouring upon themselves of the Messi- 
anic gift. “Now concerning spiritual gifts,” says 
Paul, taking up their inquiry as to the relative 
value of various gifts, and in particular as to cer- 


observance ; ef. verse 23], even as I delivered them to you.” The 
inquirers had prefaced their request for further instructions with 
the assurance that they remembered his previous directions and 
held fast to them. 





LETTERS OF THE THIRD JOURNEY 281 


tain blasphemous utterances which had claimed to 
be made “in the Spirit.” The one great principle, 
says Paul, applying here his Stoic conception of 
the new humanity as an organism comparable to 
the human body, is that all who belong to Christ 
constitute one body, so that we are members one 
of another. Thus serviceableness to the common 
life is the measure of worth. ‘The Spirit is the 
all-pervading life, and determines the proper func- 
tion of each part, foot and hand and head : — 


“ Desire then earnestly the best gifts. But I will point out 
to you a still more excellent way. ‘Tongues’ [i. e. ecstatic 
utterances] of men or angels, are no more than the blowing 
of a trumpet or rattling of a tambourine ; ‘ prophecies,’ with 
insight into all mysteries and knowledge ; ‘ wonder-working 
faith’ to the removal of mountains ; ‘helps,’ to the extent of 
giving one’s property to the poor and one’s body to the fire, 
all amount to nothing without the spirit of love, which is the 
root from which they spring. The essential distinction is 
that the phenomena you take such pride im are outward, and 
necessarily transitory. The ‘tongues’ will cease, the gnosis 
will disappear, the ‘prophesying’ will become extinct, be- 
cause the perfect involves the extinction of the partial. But 
even in the perfected social order of Christ’s kingdom the 
deeper qualities of the Spirit will not disappear. Faith and 
hope and love are the supreme charismata, because they are 
involved in the very nature of the eternal Spirit. These 
three abide forever: and the greatest of the three is love.” 


The picture which follows of the Corinthian 
church-assembly, with its prophets, prayers in a 


282 THE STORY OF ST. PAUL 

‘“‘tongue,” and “interpreters,” its individual con- 
tributions of “a psalm, a teaching, a revelation, a 
tongue, an interpretation,” is historically fasci- 
nating ; but we must pass it by. We must even 
do likewise with chapter xv., the sublime exposi- 
tion by Paul against certain opponents of his 
doctrine of the bodily resurrection, including his 
distinction between resurrection of the flesh and 
resurrection of the body. Flesh and blood cannot 
inherit the kingdom because in their nature cor- 
ruptible. God clothes the spirit with an appro- 
priate body, made of glory-substance, which is 
like that of the heavenly bodies, sun, moon, stars, 
a body like the resurrection body of Christ. And 
we who remain alive at his coming will be suddenly 
transformed. Thus the objection to the material- 
ism of Jewish ideas loses it force, while the idea is 
not lost in the vagueness of Platonic survival of 
the life-principle. The resurrection must be under- 
stood in the light of the after-death appearances of 
Jesus. 

The epistle closes with plans for the collection, 
directions about receiving Timothy, who is already 
on the way to them through Macedonia, changes 
in Paul’s own proposed itinerary. He must stay 
for the present in Ephesus, but will remain all the 
longer with them on his way to Jerusalem, for his 
present intention is to follow Timothy through Ma- 


LETTERS OF THE THIRD JOURNEY 283 


cedonia, and to spend some time, perhaps the whole 
winter, with them. Apollos will not come for the 
present. Salutations follow; then Paul’s personal 
signature with two technical words: Anathema on 
every man that does not love the Lord (an answer 
to the blasphemy that had occurred in the church- 
assembly), and the Aramaic watchword Maran- 
atha: «Come, Lord,” with the benediction. 

The curtain drops. When it rises again, it 
reveals a scene of disaster. Hither Paul has been 
forced to intervene personally, and has himself met 

rebuff and insult provoked by the hostile element 

in Corinth; or he has met it in the person of 
Timothy, his lieutenant. The exact nature of the 
church’s action is impossible to determine. What 
is certain is that. the opposition centres around 
some individual, perhaps the same offender whose 
excommunication Paul had demanded in the letter 
we have just been considering, perhaps another ; 
and that the church, instead of standing by Paul, 
had been at least weak, if not wholly disloyal. 
Some had even gone so far as to seriously demand 
the putting of Paul on trial, in accordance with 
the proposals which Paul contemptuously alludes 
to in 1 Cor. ix. 8. The nature of the accusations, 
too, is tolerably clear from that chapter. It be- 
comes much clearer in the vehement and indignant 
four chapters which conclude our 2 Corinthians. 


284 THE STORY OF ST. PAUL 


The probability is to my mind a very strong one 
that these four chapters form an improper conclu- 
sion to 2 Corinthians, and substantially represent, 
as has been argued for half a century by a rapidly 
increasing number of critics, the “ painful letter” 
referred to in 2 Cor. ii. 1-4, iii. 1, and vii. 8, 12-14. 

The wind-up of 2 Cor. i.-ix. is the opposite of 
indignant reprehension. It is glad and thankful 
reassurance and renewed confidence. In vii. 8 
Paul writes: “For though I made you sorry with 
my letter, I do not now regret it; though I did 
regret it; for I see that that letter made you 
sorry, though for a time only. Now I rejoice in 
your repentance. My glorying in you to Titus has 
been justified. He found you ready to receive him 
with fear and trembling and was refreshed by you. 
I rejoice that in everything I am of good courage 
concerning you.” If anything could make it more 
apparent that here the crisis is past, and the 
church as a whole returned to its loyalty, it is 
the succeeding two chapters, which urge the chureh 
to contribute liberally toward the collection which 
Titus and “the brother whose praise in the Gospel 
is spread through all the churches” are to arrange 
for, going in advance of Paul himself, and which 
express the confidence that herein too the Corin- 
thians will justify Paul’s boasting of them to the 
generous Macedonian givers. 


LETTERS OF THE THIRD JOURNEY = 285 


After this the abrupt violence of the first words 
of chapter x. is simply unintelligible : — 

“Now I, Paul, in my own name [apparently some one 
else had held the pen in what preceded] mtreat you, by the 
meekness and gentleness of Christ, —I who [as they allege] 
am ‘in your presence very meek among you, but absent bold 


enough ’—JI even entreat you, in order that I may not be 
compelled to show that boldness in your presence.” 


The only explanation offered by those who cling 
to the belief that the whole epistle is a single writ- 
ing is the supposition of an interruption of some 
kind at this point, and that when Paul returned to 
his writing his attention was directed no longer to 
the repentant majority, but to the still recalcitrant 
minority. But this misconceives the facts. The 
recalcitrants in these denunciatory chapters are 
not a minority. It is the church as a whole which 
Paul is castigating for allowing his enemies and 
detractors to usurp the place in their loyalty and 
affection which belonged to him alone. If 2 Cor. 
x. 1—xiii. 10 follows after 2 Cor. i—ix., then a 
second and worse disaster to Paul’s standing with 
them followed after the apparent complete reéstab- 
lishment of their repentant obedience and loyalty. 
But more than this. If these four chapters are in 
place, Paul flagrantly violated his assurance of 
iii. 1-3 that he would not “again” begin to com- 
mend himself, but would rely on them as his 


286 THE STORY OF ST. PAUL 


“letters of commendation.” The one most dis- 
tinctive feature of 2 Cor. ix.—xiii., next to the 
unsparing castigation of the church for its disloyal 
attitude, and the bitter sarcasm against his odious 
rivals, is the self-commendation. Paul admits it 
to be folly, but is driven to it by their disloyal 
silence or avowed suspicion. How can this follow 
after an assurance that the need for any further 
self-commendation has been removed by their re- 
turn to loyal support ?1 

Therefore I must needs take 2 Cor. x. 1—xiii. 10 
as Paul’s third letter — or more properly a portion 
of it.2 2 Cor. iix. and xiii. 11-14 constitutes 
Paul’s fourth letter. 

Painful as it was to Paul to be compelled to 
write his own “letter of commendation,” and to 
compare himself with the rivals who were usurping 
his place, — painful even to the point of a regret 
at having written it, which was dispelled only by 
Titus’ report of its good effect, — we cannot our- 
selves but be grateful for both portraits. Of the 

1 Cf. 2 Cor. iii. 1-3, v. 12, vii. 8-11, 16. 

2 The beginning and end have been amputated to admit of 
connection with its present setting. It is also apparent from the 
reference to specific demands made in the painful letter in 2 Cor. 
vii. 12, that if this be the letter in question, the portions relating 
to the personal affront to Paul have also been omitted; as was 
natural. The sending of Titus and “the brother ” referred to in 


xii. 18 must of course be distinguished from the sending of Titus 
and two others in yiii. 16-24, which is still in the future. 


LETTERS OF THE THIRD JOURNEY 287 


nationality and belief of Paul’s opponents we get 
a vivid idea in such words as these : — 


“Since many boast after the flesh, I too will boast. For 
you who are ‘discreet’ gladly bear with the ‘crazed.’ You 
put up with a man if he enslaves you, exploits you, ensnares 
you, if he uplifts himself, if he smites you on the face,. . . 
But whereinsoever others make bold (I am speaking in my 
‘eraziness’), I make bold as well. Are they ‘ Hebrews’ ? — 
So am I. Are they ‘Israelites’?—so am I. Are they 
‘ministers of Christ’ ? (still my ‘craziness’) I am more so: 
far beyond them in imprisonments, scourgings, death.” 


Then follows the glimpse already given! into 
Paul’s adventurous missionary career, and after- 
ward his visions and revelations, counterbalanced 
by his “stake in the flesh.” But we return to his 
sarcastic portrait of his Jewish-Christian rivals. 
What they preached, and what they accused Paul 
of, appears from the following in xi. 4 :— 


“For indeed if the new-comer preaches another Jesus, 
whom we did not preach [Paul preached the spiritual 
Christ, a second Adam, the Redeemer of humanity to the 
spiritual inheritance ; the Judaizers, another Jesus; the Son 
of David, restorer of the kingdom of Israel], or if you get a 
different Spirit, which you did not get [Paul, as we have 
seen, laid the emphasis on the inward, abiding ethical gifts 
of the Spirit, they on ‘revelations’ and ‘tongues’], or a dif- 
ferent Gospel which you were not given, you put up with 
them well enough! Why not with me? I am not a whit 
inferior to those super-extra apostles. Perhaps I am ‘uned- 


1 Above, pp. 87 £. 





288 THE STORY OF ST. PAUL 


ucated in speech’ [as compared, for example, with Apollos]; 
in knowledge I am not. Or perhaps I committed a wrong in 
humbling myself for your advantage, and preaching the Gos- 
pel of God to you for nothing! But I shall continue just as I 
have, not for lack of love to you, but to deprive these detrac- 
tors of the handle they seek against me. For these men are 
false apostles, deceitful workers, masquerading as ‘apostles 
of Christ.’ And no wonder! Satan himself masquerades as 
an angel of light. His ministers follow his example.” 


What Paul means by the reference to their mis- 
interpretation of his support having come from 
Macedonia while he was preaching in Achaia ap- 
pears more plainly when, after excusing again his 
self-commendation, he asks them satirically to for- 
give him the wrong of not imposing on them the 
burden of his support. It was, the detractors al- 
leged, his “craftiness.” Paul caught them with 
guile. At first he asked nothing, afterward he 
got large sums of money. Paul asks whether 
Titus and “the brother,” whom we now learn that 
he had sent on a previous occasion, had been de- 
tected in fraudulent dealing. Then he adds : — 


“TI suppose you think I am writing this as a defence 
before your tribunal. Well, I am coming, a third time, and 
since you wish to have me give a proof that Christ speaks in 
me, I will give it. I am not coming to plead at your bar. I 
shall come with unsparing severity. Put your own selves on 
trial. Look into your own condition, and see if you are not 
‘reprobates.’ I say it not because I care for my own vindi- 
eation at your bar, but I write that when I come I may not 


LETTERS OF THE THIRD JOURNEY 289 


be compelled to deal severely, using my authority from the 
Lord, given me for purposes of upbuilding, for purposes of 
destruction.” 


With that ominous word the fragment closes. 
It is clear how sharp was the crisis, how unbridled 
the hatred and calumny against Paul, which actu- 
ally impugned his honesty, stopped at no personal 
insult or slander, and sought to turn his own 
churches into a court before which Paul was to be 
tried as a “‘ reprobate” from the faith. And these 
men called themselves Christians, nay, “ ministers 
of Christ,” and even “apostles” in a sense which 
they denied to Paul! 

Tt is with relief that we turn to the final letter, 
written when Paul, driven out from Ephesus at 
extreme peril of his life, stopping at Troas, has 
at last in Macedonia met Titus bringing good news 
from Corinth. 

The first two chapters report his recent experi- 
ences, how he has escaped from the very sentence 
of death “ through God which raiseth dead men to 
life,” and is now in Macedonia, carrying out the 
plan proposed in 1 Cor. xvi. 5—9. Incidentally, it 
appears that one of the counts of the indictment 
against him had been his change from the earlier 
plan of going to them direct; for he stops to ex- 
plain that the change had not been from his vacil- 
lation, as alleged, but really on their account. He 


290 THE STORY OF ST. PAUL 





bids the church now forgive the author of the af- 
front, and then passes to a contrast of his ministry 
with the Mosaic, introduced by the assurances al- 
ready noted ! that he will not again commend him- 
self, because they are in their persons his “ letter 
of commendation,” that is, testify to his “ ministry.”’ 
In this connection he draws the most noble and at 
the same time touching picture of what is meant by 
‘“‘the ministry of Christ” that has ever been delin- 
eated. It is that which begins in chapter iii.” with 
a comparison of the “ministration of righteous- 
ness,” ? his “veiled gospel,” as they call it, to the 
dawn of the creative morning. “So,” says Paul, 
‘God shined in our hearts in the glorious face of 
Jesus.” It ends with v. 20—vi. 10, in the sublime 
description of the “ministry of reconciliation.” God 
in Christ is beseeching the world by his ministers to 
accept his redeeming love. They are “ ambassadors 
on behalf of Christ.” 


1 Above, p. 286. 

2 Strictly the starting-point is the transition in ii. 15-17. 

3 In the painful letter, xi. 15, the Judaizers are represented as 
calling themselves “ ministers of righteousness,” of course in dis- 
tinction from Paul, whom they designated a “ minister of sin.’’ 
Cf. Gal. ii. 17, where Paul answers the argument that if we step 
down to the level of “sinners of the Gentiles,” whose only hope of 
salvation is the cross, we make Christ a “‘ minister of sin.’’ In the 
present contrast he even speaks of the Law, regarded as the 
ground of salvation, as a “ ministration of death and condemna- 
tion,’’ 2 Cor. iii. 7-9. 


LETTERS OF THE THIRD JOURNEY 291 


A personal appeal of affection to the Corinthians 
follows in vi. 11-18, vii. 2-4,1 reverting again to the 
painful letter and Paul’s anxiety since writing it, 
until Titus brought the good word from them that 
has just reached him. So he ends by promising his 
speedy coming, telling of the liberality of the Mace- 
donian churches, and urging them to justify his 
boasting of them. The exhortation winds up with 
a thanksgiving for God’s unspeakable gift, and (in 
xiii. 11-14) the simple “ Farewell ; be perfected, be 
comforted, and the God of love and peace shall be 
with you.” Then the full Trinitarian benediction. 

The next letter is written out of a period of brief 
but well-earned peace, which, however, is but the 
lull before the supreme fury of the storm. It dates 
some two or three months later. Paul has reached 
Corinth and wintered there.? Before undertaking 

1 Omitting the fragment vi. 14—vii. 1. 

2 Tf any authentic elements underlie the note to Titus, it is 
probably this same winter which is referred to in Tit. iii. 12. At 
the time of writing, Paul was expecting to winter in Nicopolis. Ti- 
tus accordingly had not yet been directed to go to Corinth and 
thence come to meet Paul in Troas. The allusions in 2 Cor. ii. 12 f. 
show that there had been a miscarriage of plans, due, no doubt, 
either to the expulsion of Paul from Ephesus, or the disturbances 
in Corinth. If the note underlying Titus was written from Ephe- 
sus, Paul then expected to await the repentance of the Corinthians 
in Epirus. More serious developments in Corinth will have com- 
pelled him, after writing the painful letter, to countermand the 


former instructions, and bid Titus come to him in Troas or Macedo- 
nia via Corinth, bringing news of the effect of the peremptory 


292 THE STORY OF ST. PAUL 


the highly dangerous journey to Jerusalem, he seeks 
to pave the way for his coming to Rome; for he hopes 
through the prayers of Christians there, and the 
grace of God, he may, in spite of all, be successful 
in Jerusalem, and come to them in peace. Then the 
long desire of his heart will be satisfied. The very 
centre and metropolis of the Gentile world will be 
his missionary headquarters. By their help he can 
carry the Gospel even to Spain, the Ultima Thule of 
Oriental thought. 

The adaptation of Romans to these conditions of 
Paul’s own, and of the Gentile church he is address- 
ing, is worthy of the Apostle. They are not his 
foundation, yet the very centre of his province. He 
cannot pass them by. But neither can he assume 
that they have not been prejudiced against him by 
his assiduous defamers. The best of all would be 
that he should succeed in restoring at Jerusalem the 
same cordial relations as on his former visit from 
Antioch, eight years before. If so, he can come “ in 
the fulness of the blessing of Christ,” coming unto 
them “in joy through the will of God, and together 
with them finding rest.” If imprisonment or death 
prevents his coming, or if he can come only to face 
the same relentless slander and hostility as on all 


letter. Titus took longer than Paul expected in Corinth, and their 
meeting was thus put off till Paul had proceeded to Macedonia, 
where his extreme anxiety was at last relieved. 


LETTERS OF THE THIRD JOURNEY 293 


his Greek mission-field hitherto, still the remedy is 
the same. He must lay before them the gospel he 
preaches in its simplicity, silencing slander, prepar- 
ing for his coming by the full opening of his heart. 
Or else, if he “ be absent,” the letter will speak for 
him the message he would have given. Out of this 
situation comes the most systematic of Paul’s pre- 
sentations of his gospel, that which to him is “ the 
power of God unto salvation to every one that hath 
faith, to the Jew first and also to the Gentile,” be- 
cause it reveals a divinely supplied “ righteousness ” 
on the basis of faith alone. 

In the development of this thesis of the univer- 
salizing of redemption by its being conditioned on 
faith alone, Paul shows first that the Jew, in spite 
of his boasted knowledge of the Law, is as much 
under the wrath of God as the heathen. Thus the 
atonement is equally indispensable to Jew and Gen- 
tile; for it is a manifestation, through the vicarious 
death of the Messiah, at once of the extent of God’s 
reclaiming love for the sinner, and of his hatred for 
sin. Thus God cannot be accused of laxity in pass- 
ing it over, seeing he pays such a price to free us 
from it. This is Paul’s ethical interpretation of the 
cruder doctrine of substitution he had “ received.” 1 
The doctrine of 4 Maccabees neither satisfied his 
moral sense nor gave his reason any answer to the 

1 1 Cor. xy. 3. 


294 THE STORY OF ST. PAUL 


fundamental question why the divine scheme of 
things must necessarily include suffering. 

The rebuttal of the objection, “ But this makes 
the Law of none effect,” proceeds then as in Gala- 
tians, only more fully, in chapters iv.—vii. : — 


‘« The real prerogative of Abraham is not the setting apart 
of a preferred race, who should win at length the Messianic 
heavenly reward by obedience to a prescribed series of obser- 
vances subsequently made known. It is simply discipline 
in faith. The promise to Abraham was for his faith. The 
redemption was not meant for his [physical] descendants, 
but for the descendants of Adam [that is, the evil was world- 
wide]. Whoever of all these exercised Abraham’s faith 
would become the spiritual descendant of Abraham and heir 
of the promise, Christ, the second Adam, being the leader of 
this new humanity into its inheritance. Until Christ, men 
were simply being prepared to exercise faith. Jews were 
under the discipline of the Mosaic Law, Gentiles under an 
analogous discipline. The Law supervened to increase sin 
and the consciousness thereof, that ultimately grace might 
much more abound. 

“Baptism accordingly typifies death, burial, resurrection. 
The immersion under the water is a putting off of the life 
we inherit from Adam, as Christ put it off on the cross, the 
emergence and clothing with white garments is the putting 
on of the life conveyed in the Spirit, the Messianic gift, as 
Christ by the same Spirit was raised to immortal life. Con- 
sequently, whoever has been baptized furnishes his body as 
the organism of a life which is not his own, but is at the 
same time Christ’s, and God’s, and his own. His members 
are rendered as instruments of righteousness to God. The 
dominance of this Spirit-life in us is the answer to the ob- 


LETTERS OF THE THIRD JOURNEY 295 


jection that if the Law is done away, men will give free rein 
to their passions. On the contrary, they will give free rein to 
the impulse of love and goodness; for it is this which is now 
dominant in them. Moreover, it is this incoming of the tide 
of divine life which solves the whole hopeless problem of 
Stoic philosophy. Christ, revealed by God as the spiritual 
man from heaven, at once himself life-giving Spirit and type 
of the man that is to be, is the answer to the piteous cry of 
humanity voiced in the Greek mysteries, in the poets, in the 
Stoic philosophers — yes, in Paul’s own experience — for an 
évOovciacués, an influx of divinity, to turn the scales of the 
hopeless inner conflict against brute nature in favor of the 
higher divine nature. 

“ This, then, is the solution of the riddle of humanity. The 
Spirit in us is the guarantee of immortality. It transforms 
the moral nature, but not that alone; it transforms the very 
physical nature, subtly working even in our mortal bodies, 
preparing them for transformation into counterparts of the 
glory-body in which Jesus appeared after his death. Yes, 
and even the whole material creation will be transformed by 
it at the manifestation of the sons of God, a new-created 
spiritual humanity dwelling in a new-created spiritual uni- 
verse. No power in earth or heaven or hell, not life or 
death, or things present or future, can prevent this consum- 
mation; for the power which effects it in us is the love 
of God exhibited in Christ.” 


Interesting as it is, as Paul’s retrospect and 
prospect over the history of our race, I must pass 
over the second division of the letter, in which 
Paul supplements his theory of world-redemption 
with a special explanation of the relation of Jew 
and Gentile, in God’s providential dealing. Also I 


296 THE STORY OF ST. PAUL 


must omit the admirable practical section by which 
the teachings of both main divisions are combined 
in chapters xiii_xv. We see that Paul is still, as 
ever, striving to make love the perfect “bond of 
unity.” There are in Rome, as elsewhere, the 
“strong” and the “ weak.” In fact, the “ strong,” 
the Paulinists, have clearly the upper hand, and, 
as in Corinth, Paul has to remind them to qualify 
their liberty by consideration for the scrupulous ; 
to eat herbs, if necessary, in order not to over- 
throw for meat’s sake the redeeming work of God. 
Mutual tolerance is the one rule, “ receiving” one 
another as Christ accepted you. It is the Hymn of 
Love over again in practical application. 

In xv. 14-33 we have the epistolary close, with 
its matters of present and future plans already 
mentioned,! and in xvi. 21-23 the salutations. 
Only in xvi. 25-27 and xvi. 1-20 we have some 
Pauline fragments, which have found a place here? 
probably because Romans stood, as we are told by 
the earliest writers, at the close of the Pauline col- 
lection. The doxology, xvi. 25-27, is a stray frag- 
ment ; xvi. 1-16 is a letter of commendation, which 
the numerous greetings and other indications show 
was originally addressed to Ephesus. Paul may 

1 Above, p. 292. 

2 Rom, xvi. 25-27 does not appear, however, in all manu- 


scripts, and in some is placed elsewhere. 
3 See Bacon, Introd. to New Test. p. 101. 


LETTERS OF THE THIRD JOURNEY 297 


have dictated it to Tertius at the same sitting as 
the letter to Rome, and so the two come to be 
copied together. It introduces Phebe, a deaconess 
of the church in Cenchreex, the port of Corinth. 
To the critical historian it is of extreme interest 
for the ray of light thrown on the obscure begin- 
nings of that all-important Pauline church in 
Ephesus. But to us it is hardly available as a 
source of Pauline doctrine. Verses 17-20 appear 
to be a fragment. We must bid farewell to Paul 
on his way to imprisonment, and soon to death, 
with the noble outline of his gospel of world-wide 
redemption by faith, and cosmic re-creation by the 
Spirit, the great Epistle to the Romans, of which 
an unknown writer of the second century declares 
that it presents “the whole tenor of the Scrip- 
tures.” 


LECTURE IX 
THE CHRISTOLOGICAL EPISTLES 


From the time of Paul’s writing to the Romans 
from Corinth, on the eve of setting out for the 
peace-making journey to Jerusalem, there is no 
certain trace of any word from his pen until sey- 
eral years after, when special circumstances draw 
from his prison in Rome a group of three letters, 
all written on the same occasion, and to the same 
region. No wonder they present a new type. 

We have conjectured! that the fragment in 
2 Timothy sending for his cloak and books left in 
Troas, in preparation for the “ winter,’ may have 
been written just at the beginning of his two years’ 
imprisonment at Cesarea. For the rest we must 
think of these three or four years as a time of 
enforced retirement, when the Apostle was thrown 
in upon himself. Meantime the tides of battle 
without had veered. Just how the conflict brought 
to a crisis by the visit of the great delegation from 
“the churches of the Gentiles” to Jerusalem had 
turned out, we are not told. We only know that 
when the curtain lifts again, that phase of things 

1 Above, p. 196. 


THE CHRISTOLOGICAL EPISTLES 299 


has passed. The old battle-cries of Galatians, 
Corinthians, Romans, about Paul’s apostleship, his 
gospel of justification by faith without works, free- 
dom from circumcision and the obligation of the 
Law, have faded out of hearing. Or if some echoes 
remain, they have a different ring, and they no 
more affect Paul as of old. Then there is the 
rhapsody of Ephesians on the Church as the Bride 
of Christ, a New Jerusalem builded like a city 
that is compact together, on the foundation of the 
Apostles and prophets, the enmity slain, the middle 
wall of partition broken down, an undivided Body 
of Christ. Some, indeed, cannot admit Ephesians 
to be genuine; but make it even deutero-Pauline, 
and still what sort of feeling is here evinced, in 
deutero-Pauline circles, toward the mother church? 
Surely no one can read Ephesians and say that 
Paul risked his life in vain at Jerusalem. 

There is now a new danger; yet a danger not 
wholly new. Already in the Corinthian corre- 
spondence, Paul had had occasion to rebuke a type 
of speculative thought calling itself after Apollos. 
There were men puffed up with the notion of their 
own superior insight into “ mysteries.” Gnosticism, 
as it came later to be called, the doctrine of re- 
demption by enlightenment, was already present in 
these regions of Hellenic and Hellenistic theosophy 
while Paul was spending there his last five years 


300 THE STORY OF ST. PAUL 


of missionary effort. It was a danger only tempo- 
rarily obscured by the more immediate peril of the 
Judaizing assaults upon his apostleship and gospel. 
Now Paul’s hands are free to grapple with it. 

The group of three letters, Philemon, Colossians, 
Ephesians, in which we next hear from Paul, is 
written to a region unvisited by him, though ap- 
parently evangelized during his three years’ stay in 
Ephesus. Philemon indeed is a personal convert 
of Paul himself, but not at Colosse, his home, 
which Paul has never visited.2_ Epaphras, who is 
now sharing Paul’s imprisonment, whence or why 
we know not, seems to have been the evangelizer of 
the region,’ and is now evincing to Paul his great 
anxiety for its three churches in the adjoining 
towns on the upper Lycus, Laodicea, Hierapolis, 
and Colosse. But Paul has two other reasons for 
writing; one is that the runaway slave of Phile- 
mon, Onesimus, has come to Rome, perhaps to 
secure Paul’s intercession with his master, and has 
been converted. Paul would gladly have kept him 
as an attendant, but his conscience forbids. Finally, 
the immediate occasion of all three letters appears 
to be that the churches in question have written to 
Paul, expressing their deep concern for his wel- 
fare. Why they did so may perhaps be explained 
by the fact that Epaphras their founder and Aris- 

1 Philem. 19. 2 Col. ii. 1. Sal's. f. 


THE CHRISTOLOGICAL EPISTLES 301 


tarchus (apparently a free man at last accounts in 
Acts xxvii. 2) are now in captivity along with 
Paul. How long the Apostle has been in Rome 
there is no indication; but these new imprison- 
ments (?) and the anxiety on his account, which 
Paul seeks to allay in Eph. iii. 13, Col. i. 24, 
Philem. 22, may perhaps be taken to show that his 
condition is not so favorable as during the “two 
years in his own hired house” with which Acts 
breaks off. At all events, whether during, or later 
than, these two years, a group of churches not 
known to Paul by face have written him. This we 
infer from the reference to a letter from the Colos- 
sians in Col. i. 9, “ We also cease not to pray for 
you,” and from two similar references in the other 
letter, “‘I also cease not to give thanks for you,” 
and, “ But that ye also may know my affairs how 
I do, Tychieus shall make known all.”? The cor- 
respondents addressed had written Paul that they 
gave thanks and prayed for him, and had told him 
their affairs, how they did. This other epistle is 
called by us Ephesians, but it certainly was not 
sent to Ephesus, as practically all scholars now 
admit. The most ancient manuscripts do not even 
have the words “in Ephesus” in the first verse, 
but merely “ Paul . . . to the saints that are, and 
the faithful in Christ Jesus,” the place-name being 
1 ph. i. 15. 2 Eph. vi. 21. 


"7 


wanting. The most ancient form of the title 
known to us is “To the Laodiceans.”1 In any 
event, those to whom it was sent were strangers 
to Paul, for their faith is known to him only by 
report, and his career only by report to them. 


302 THE STORY OF ST. PAUL 


This of course excludes Ephesus; but there is no 
reason why the epistle may not be the one Paul 
tells the Colossians will reach them by way of 
Laodicea, and the copies with év "E¢éow have come 
from Ephesus. 

To study the group we should begin with 
Philemon ; for that will reveal to us the external 
situation on both sides. Then we should examine 
Colossians for traces of the special conditions that 
are giving so much anxiety to Epaphras. That 
will give us the situation on the inner side of 
things among those Paul is writing to. Lastly 
we should pursue Paul’s own thought in its more 
extended form in the general letter known to 
us as Ephesians. The study of this letter, how- 
ever, we shall undertake later, in connection with 
Philippians and 2 Timothy. It should be remem- 
bered, however, that its historical and literary con- 
nections are with Philemon and Colossians. 


1 Tertullian taunts Marcion with using this title as if pluming 
himself on a discovery. Tertullian’s texts seem to have been, 
like our own earliest authorities, destitute of any indication of the 
place. 


THE CHRISTOLOGICAL EPISTLES 303 


The picture we can outline from the gentle, 
playful note borne by Onesimus to his former 
master, Paul’s friend in Colosse, is an idyllic one. 
Imagine a handsome estate in the inland city, its 
owner, Philemon, converted long since by Paul, 
together with Apphia his wife. Their son Archip- 
pus is “minister” of the Colossian church, and the 
estate itself with its numerous slaves and clients 
forms now a church, or community of Christians, 
in which the relation of master and slave is not 
done away, but sanctified by the Gospel. Even in 
his distant prison Paul hears (through Epaphras) 
of the refreshment to the hearts of all the saints 
that has flowed from this household of consecrated 
wealth. Only five or six miles away is wealthy and 
prosperous Laodicea, where the estate of Nymphas 
shelters a similar community of Christians; and 
just across the Lycus is still another large town, 
Hierapolis, with its own Christian community. 
The earthquake which destroyed Laodicea in 61— 
64 has not yet occurred. All three churches had, 
perhaps, united in the letter to Paul. 

Writing now to his personal friend, Paul asks 
the manumission of the runaway returned. This 
will be a refreshment to his heart.1 He knows 
Philemon will do even beyond what he asks, and 
yet he makes the letter a note of hand. Paul will 


1 Verse 20; cf. verse 7. 


304 THE STORY OF ST. PAUL 


repay whatever Onesimus took for his escape. 
Philemon will find himself none the poorer for 
exchanging an “unprofitable” slave for a Chris- 
tian brother made “ profitable” to him by ties of 
gratitude — for the name Onesimus means “ profit- 
able.” 

Such is the scene at Colosse. And what-at 
Rome? The letter gives a glimpse at Paul’s situa- 
tion also. He is “such an one as Paul the aged, 
and now a prisoner also of Christ Jesus ;” needing 
one to minister to him in the bonds of the Gospel. 
But he is not secluded. Epaphras of Colosse and 
Aristarchus of Thessalonica are his fellow prison- 
ers, Mark, Demas, and Luke his fellow workers ; 
all send greetings. Another, a certain Jesus, called 
Justus, one of the few Jews who have been a com- 
fort to Paul, sends his greeting to the Colossians, 
but he seems not to have known Philemon, or else 
was not present at the time of writing. More- 
over, Paul now thinks his prospects of release are 
bright. At least he playfully bids Philemon get 
ready a room for him too, because he hopes that 
their prayers for him will be granted. Tychicus is 
to tell by word of mouth Paul’s real condition 
and prospects, so we hear nothing of the progress 
of his case. But the Jewish Christians are not 
friendly.} 

1 Col. iy. 11. 


THE CHRISTOLOGICAL EPISTLES 305 


That is all we learn directly of Paul. Indirectly 
we catch a glimpse in this little note of the true 
gentleman, whose honorable dealing and courtesy 
in daily life agree with those peerless lessons of 
love and consideration we read in the great Epistles. 

But along with this personal letter to Philemon 
Paul had sent to the church in Colosse by Tychicus 
an epistle designed to meet the special conditions 
which aroused the anxiety of Epaphras, and which 
Paul’s own experience would give him only too 
much reason to fear for churches in just this re- 
gion midway between Galatia and Ephesus. And 
here I must digress for a word on the background 
of gospel-preaching on Hellenistic soil. 

We must remember that Christianity could not 
go to the Greek world offering a “Son of David” 
who would “restore the kingdom to Israel.” It 
belongs to the fundamentals of Pauline thought 
that from the very start he conceived the redemp- 
tion in Christ on a basis wholly transcending this 
nationalistic Jewish Messianism. In his Christ 
there could be neither Jew nor Greek, but only 
a Deliverer of the common humanity from its com- 
mon woes of sin and death. Paul brought to the 
Gentile world Christ as a second Adam, the spirit- 
ual man from heaven, deliverer from the burden of ° 
carnality and the doom of death. Now the Greek 
world was anything but unconscious of these woes. 


306 THE STORY OF ST. PAUL 7 
For centuries, as the national pantheons had crum- 
bled, so, proportionally, a new type of religion 
had grown, whose centre was the individual man, 
with his struggle to subordinate the lower to the 
diviner element in himself and thus to lay hold 
upon immortality. This new and vigorously spread- 
ing type of religion found lodgment wherever the 
sense of the worth of the individual had sprung up 
with the decay of the old nationalities. It was 
the religion of so-called “mysteries,” Eleusinian, 
Orphic, Bacchic, Greek, and Oriental, supported by 
voluntary organizations (@/acov) of neophytes and 
adepts, with their symbolic rites and sacraments. 
Perhaps the most widespread of all was the reli- 
gion of Mithra, of Persian-Babylonian origin, with 
its doctrine of the divinity incarnate by a virgin 
in the sacred cave, a hero-demigod, victorious over 
death and the under-world, and delivering the fol- 
lower likewise. Its “sacraments” of baptisms 
purging from sin, and its mystic meal, a com- 
munion of consecrated bread and water (or wine), 
were so like the Christian that the second century 
fathers can only account for the resemblance as 
the Jesuit missionaries in China accounted for the 
Buddhist mass. They were parodies devised by 
the Devil to throw ridicule upon Christian rites. 
The monuments of Mithra-worship scattered all 
over the Greco-Roman world furnish to this day 


THE CHRISTOLOGICAL EPISTLES 307 


constant puzzles to the archeologist as to whether 
he is dealing with Christian or heathen symbolism.1 

But it is not the religion of Mithra alone which 
before the day of Christianity was attempting to 
meet the wants which the Gospel at last should 
satisfy. All the mysteries, both Greek and Orien- 
tal, have as their common theme the Indian doc- 
trine of avatar, which Barth in his “ Religions of 
India” (p. 170) describes as “the presence, at 
once mystical and real, of the Supreme Being in 
a human individual, who is at once and at the same 
time true God and true man; and this intimate 
union of the two natures is represented as contin- 
uing after the death of the individual in whom 
it took place.” Some forms of the mystery myths 
are familiar, that, e. g., of Orpheus rescuing Eury- 
dice from the under-world. But we sometimes fail 
to recognize these redemption myths in their older, 
cruder forms, as in the ancient Babylonian legend 
of the descent of Ishtar to the under-world, whence 
she is rescued by Asusunisim; until we find them 
in Egypt, in Persia, in Scandinavia, the world 
over, testifying to man’s longing for life, and. how 
hope has spurred imagination to find in nature her- 
self a type of immortality. The ancient prophets 

1 See Cumont, Textes et Monuments relatifs aux Mystéres de 


Mithra, 1899. English abstract by Open Court Publishing Co., 
Chicago, 1903. 


308 THE STORY OF ST. PAUL 


struggled in vain in Israel to wholly detach the 
popular faith from Egyptian and Babylonian my- 
thology. Even the appearance of complete detach- 
ment in Rabbinic literature is delusive. With 
Christianity, Judaism threw off a type of Messian- 
ism represented in the Apocalyptic literature which 
otherwise would have left Judaism not without a 
succession to the speculative and quasi-mythological 
literature of the non-canonical books. 

If even Judaism, until the reaction against 
Christianity led her to a violent repudiation of 
these syncretistic ideas, had admitted something of 
that world-messianism, in particular the great doc- 
trine, never to be relinquished, of personal immor- 
tality in a world to come, we may well conceive 
into what a chaotic world of unformed religious 
thought and aspiration Paul entered. The national 
religions had broken down and their elements were 
fused together. Religious faith turned to the an- 
cient mythologies and gave them a new interpreta- 
tion. Myths of the dying and resurrected sun-god ; 
Heracles, son of the father of the gods and a 
human mother, who, when on earth, went about 
righting wrongs, and after laboring and suffering 
for mankind, ascended to heaven from the pyre on 
(Eta; Prometheus, crucified for revealing to man- 
kind the beneficent arts and sciences ;—— these are 
Greek forms of earlier myths of Egypt and Baby- 


7 


THE CHRISTOLOGICAL EPISTLES 309 


lon, Marduk, son of Ea the Creator, who over- 
comes Tiamat the Chaos dragon, and still older 
myths, which furnished to Greek and Oriental mys- 
teries their symbolic stories of the G«ds cwryp, the 
- Saviour-God, who delivers humanity by incarnation 
and victory over death. Our word “enthusiasm” 
is simply taken over from the coinage of the Greek 
mystery. The worshiper sought mystical union 
with the Geds cwryp ; he purged away sin by ceremo- 
nial lustrations and ascetic practices; he covered 
- himself with a mask representing the divinity, or 
with blood representing the blood of the hero; he 
ate and drank elements which represented the flesh 
and life of the god; he sought by every means of 
symbol and imagery to establish intercommunion 
of life, so that, living, he might ,be infused with that 
reinforcement of the diviner element in himself 
giving conquest of the lower self, and dying, might 
attain immortality. 

Beliefs and rites of this type preoccupied the 
ground on which Paul labored, and they furnish 
him no inconsiderable part of his special vocabu- 
lary and mode of representation. His “ gospel of 
the reconciliation, how that God was in Christ re- 
conciling the world,” was also a doctrine of the 
Geos cwryp; only he (or a disciple) spoke of “God 
our Saviour,” not “Christ our Saviour,’ which 
would have had in that time a ring of the demigod 


310 THE STORY OF ST. PAUL 


or hero myth. The Stoics had been beforehand with 
Paul in utilizing the conceptions of mystery reli- 
gion. They had set forth the doctrine of our com- 
mon humanity as an organism and man’s sense of 
the need of divine “ inanimation ” of our mortality. 
But Paul does not hesitate to borrow even the 
phraseology and symbolism of the Greek mystery 
religion. 

No other origin can be found for such expres- 
sions as “the mystery of Christ,’ God as the eds 
cwr7p, or Christ as the composite, collective “* new 
man,” into the measure of the stature of whose 
fullness we are growing up together. Such concep- 
tions as union through baptism with the death of 
Christ, in the putting off of the body of flesh, that 
we may also be united to him in the power of his 
resurrection, “ putting on” the new man, are con- 
ceptions that cannot be fully appreciated by us till 
we realize the material Paul is building with, the 
ideas inbred in his readers. It was not possible 
to preach the Gospel on such soil, and not employ 
this phraseology and these ideas. If it had been 
possible, it would have been a foolish neglect of 
germs of truth which God in his own way had 
sown in millions of hearts that were groping after 
him in heathen darkness, longing for deliverance 
from the dominion of sin and death. 

But that is only one aspect of Greek religious 


THE CHRISTOLOGICAL EPISTLES 311 


ideas of the time, the popular, the religion of in- . 
stinct. We know more about the religion of intel- 
lect, philosophy, and speculation. Here in Ephesus 
and Ionia was the birthplace and cradle of Greek 
philosophy, which had done its full part to over- 
throw the old national pantheon. Enlightened peo- 
ple everywhere treated Zeus and Athene, Hermes 
and Aphrodite, as names of childish fable. They 
spoke of God (6 @eds) as we do. They defined his 
nature and attributes as modern theistic writers 
do. Since Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, the mo- 
notheism of all thinking people was as distinct as 
ours. But the tendency to monotheism is always 
and inevitably associated with some form of belief 
in intermediate agencies, supplying the necessary 
connection between the invisible absolute God and 
the visible creation. The Jews created a hierarchy 
of angels and demons. Greek philosophy formu- 
lated a Logos doctrine; and this is what we mean 
by a Logos doctrine. Pure monism is an unattaina- 
ble ideal of thought. As soon as we have conceived 
of all existence as an original unit, we are obliged 
to imagine something to account for existing differ- 
ence. Something went forth from the Absolute 
and became objective to him, and in that Some- 
thing was involved whatever is finite, conditioned, 
dependent. God filling the universe of being with 
its content is distinguished from God self-existent 


312 THE STORY OF ST. PAUL 


before creation ; and the Greek thinker terms this 
* content ” of the universe Pleroma. 

Look at it from another aspect. We think of 
God as pure spirit. But we perceive about us a 
universe of matter. Cannot one be derived from 
the other? Or must we hold the two eternally un- 
related ? Man’s own structure furnishes the solitary 
key. He is himself a union of spirit and matter. 
Pervading and controlling his body is his reason 
and will (Adyos or vots). When it is imperfectly 
dominant, man’s nature is full of disorder and evil. 
When it disappears, there is dissolution. In like 
manner the visible universe is permeated, con- 
trolled, animated, by a rationality (Logos) which 
makes it a cosmos and not a chaos! The mere 
formless material (ij) may be conceived as eter- 
nally self-existent, or as thrown off by the Logos 
principle. In either event, that which makes the 
universe intelligibly existent must be kin to human 
intelligence. Then that which gives the universe 
existence (as a cosmos, if not absolutely), that by 
which it consists, is what we know in ourselves as 
Reason. 

In Paul’s day a succession of the greatest spec- 
ulative thinkers the world has ever known had 


developed this line of cosmogonic or cosmological 


1 See the Jewish mode of presenting this idea in Wisdom i. 7; 
Eccelus. xxiv. 3. : 


7 


THE CHRISTOLOGICAL EPISTLES 313 


philosophy. Wherever Greek civilization was 
known men were familiar with this Logos doc- 
trine. The term in one sense of the word (Adyos 
éviidGeros) means thought, in the other (Adyos zpo- 
gopixds) means expression. The Palestinian Stoic 
prefers the term Wisdom. However expressed, 
this conception is the great contribution of Greek 
philosophy to solve the insoluble problem of mo- 
nism vs. dualism. Logos, Nous, Wisdom, a dif- 
fused divine entity, personal and yet not person, 
is its principle of unity in God and man and nature, 
making change and difference conceivable. Thus 
Thales of Miletus, first of the Ionian philosophers, 
already taught that “ Intelligence (vois) is the God 
of the world, which is animated throughout and 
full of deity.” Pythagoras refines still further, 
and identifies the mediating principle with that 
which gives us the purely abstract science of num- 
ber. Heraclitus of Ephesus (about 500 B. c.) began 
his treatise on the universe with words which recall 
to us the prologue of the Fourth Gospel, for he not 
only makes the Logos principle the link of rela- 
tion between the Absolute and the finite, but also 
the principle of knowledge and revelation in man. 
«Of this Logos, though it be an eternal principle, 
men have no comprehension, neither before nor 
after they have been told of it. For although all 
things take place in accordance with this Logos, 


314 THE STORY OF ST. PAUL 


men are as though senseless. Although the Logos 
enters into all, most men live as if their perception 
were a personal belonging of their own.” 

Manifestly, the popular avatar doctrine of the 
Redeemer God, becoming incarnate to deliver man 
and give him immortality, stands all ready for com- 
bination with the more philosophical Logos doc- 
trine of cosmological speculation. In reality, the 
Hellenistic conception of hypostatic Wisdom, the 
agent of God both in creation and redemption, 
combines the essential features of both. 

So after Thales and Heraclitus and Pythagoras, 
the Ionians, the Eleatics, the Sophists, come Plato 
and Aristotle with their idealism, followed by the 
Stoics, who develop the Logos doctrine in their 
own way, not only to explain the universe, but ap- 
plying it as the divine redemptive agency for their 
ethics and anthropology. To the second century 
fathers this Logos doctrine of the Greek philoso- 
phers was a phenomenon more unaccountable even 
than the sacraments of the mysteries. The philoso- 
phers, they said, had preached Christianity before 
Christ. Athanasius, a master of the whole subject, 
is far from admitting any indebtedness of Chris- 
tianity to Greek metaphysics, but demands to know 
of heathen philosophers of his time what there is 
in the whole Logos doctrine of Christianity which 
is not identical with their own, “except that the 


_. pauaaiall ” 


THE CHRISTOLOGICAL EPISTLES 315 


Logos became flesh.” Now we have seen that the 
Logos doctrine had found its way into Jewish 
thought even before the Christian era, and in two 
almost wholly independent directions. 

In the Book of Wisdom the mediating principle 
is designated by the Hebrew term Wisdom, and 
defined as “a breath of God’s power, a pure efful- 
gence of the glory of the Almighty, the brightness 
of the everlasting light, and partaker of the life of 
God.” Wisdom in all the so-called Wisdom lit- 
erature is the agent of God in both creation and 
redemption, the medium by which God made the 
world, works in it, and which, “passing from gen- 
eration to generation into holy souls, makes men 
friends of God and prophets.” In Alexandria, 
however, the Jewish philosopher Philo frankly 
adopts the Greek term Logos, and explains Greek 
philosophy as borrowed from Moses. 

Paul in Ephesus worked in the very centre of 
this speculative atmosphere. Moreover he was asso- 
ciated there with the learned Alexandrian Apollos, 
who previously had taught in Corinth. In Corinth 
there appears a disposition of Apollos’ converts — 
to exaggerate the redemptive worth of “ enlighten- 
ment” (yéors). In fact, the Corinthians enunciate 
in their letter to Paul, as we saw, an out and out 
Logos doctrine: “ We know that no idol is any- 
thing in the world, and that there is no God but 


316 THE STORY OF ST. PAUL 


one. For though there be that are called gods, 
.. + yet to us there is one God the Father, of 
whom are all things, and we unto him; and one 
Lord Jesus Christ, through whom are all things, 
and we through him.” This gnosis Paul does not 
disapprove. He only warns them that all men do 
not have it. He himself could have taught them a 
philosophy of “the mystery of Christ” if he had 
thought them ready for it, and he gives us, in fact, 





glimpses into his cosmology in the second and the 
fifteenth chapters of Corinthians, as well as in the 
eighth of Romans. 

So even before his imprisonment Paul clearly 
takes up something of this speculative thought. In 
Ephesians and Colossians its phraseology recurs 
again and again. Christ as the “ Pleroma of Him 
that filleth all with all” is an example. And this 
philosophy which Paul holds, but did not preach, 
was apparently, even in the earlier epistles, both 
an avatar and a Logos doctrine. At least, he 
thinks of Christ as preéxistent, and identifies him 
with this Jewish hypostasis of creative and redemp- 
tive Wisdom. 

In 1 Cor. ii. 6-16 the “mind of Christ” is 
identified with the mind of God operative in crea- 
tion, and not only are the terms copia and divayis 
Geos applied here in a technical sense to Christ, 
but in Rom. x. 6, 7, it is distinctly declared that 


THE CHRISTOLOGICAL EPISTLES 317 


the “word” (Asyos) of which Moses wrote, “ Who 
shall ascend into heaven and bring it down; or 
who shall descend into the abyss and bring it 
up?” was Christ.1 What Paul means becomes 
apparent, when we compare the use made in Ba- 
ruch ui. 29-37 of the same passage from Deut. 
xxx. 12-14, in a long discourse on Wisdom as the 
agent of redemption. Baruch says, “* Who hath 
gone up into heaven and taken her, and brought 
her down from the clouds? Who hath gone over 
the sea, and found her, and will bring her for 
choice gold? He that knoweth all things knoweth 
her; he found her out with his understanding. 
. . . He hath found out all the way of know- 
ledge, and hath given it unto Jacob his servant, 
and to Israel his ‘beloved.’ Afterward did she 
_ [Wisdom] appear upon earth, and was conversant 
with men.”? Baruch simply substitutes for the 


1 Trenzus (Her. III. xviii. 2) applies Rom. x. 6-9 to the Logos. 
In I. ix. 3 he quotes Eph. iv. 9 as a Logos avatar. “The Logos 
that descended is the same,” etc. 

2 Cf. the Wisdom utterances in Lk. xi. 49-51, xiii. 34, 35 
(=Mbt. xxiii. 34-39); Mt. xi. 28-30 (?); and especially the Oxy- 
rhynchus Fragment, Log. iv.: ‘‘ Jesus [Wisdom] saith: I stood 
in the midst of the world, and in the flesh was I seen of them; 
and I found all men drunken, and none athirst [sc. for the ‘ foun- 
tains of wisdom,’ Enoch, xlviii.1] among them. And my soul 
grieveth over the sons of men, because they are blind in their 
heart.” See also Enoch, xlii. 1-3; Ecclus. xxiy. 6-12; Wisd. i. 6, 
vi. 13-16, ix. 4, 6, 9-11; Prov. i. 20-33; Pirke Aboth, iii. 14. 





318 THE STORY OF ST. PAUL 


” 


word “Torah” in Deuteronomy the philosophic 
term “ Wisdom,” and Paul takes the next step 
and proceeds to identify this “« Wisdom ” in the hea- 
ven above and the abyss beneath with “ Christ.” 
Again a Logos doctrine identifying Christ with 
this personalized Wisdom of God is implied in 
1 Cor. x. 4, where Paul declares that the rock of 
which Israel drank in the desert was Christ, just 
as Philo had called it the Logos. It is implied 
where he speaks of Christ as the agent of creation 
in 1 Cor. viii. 6, and in the preéxistence implied 
in saying that Christ for our sakes “‘ became poor, 
though he was rich” (2 Cor. viii. 9). In Ephe- — 
sians, Colossians, and Philippians we shall see how 
it develops. It seems to me, therefore, undeniable 
that Paul positively held a Logos doctrine. Still 
his cosmological ideas are formed, on the whole, in 
a different school from the Alexandrian. He can 
be, but does not wish to be, a philosopher. He em- 
ploys the phraseology of mystery religion with its 
sacramentarian mysticism of union with the De- 
liverer God, but he does not surrender to it; nor 
to cosmological philosophy with its Logos specula- 
tion. 

There is a third factor of peculiarly Jewish type 
that perhaps has more influence with Paul than 
either of those described, namely, apocalypse. But 
before I leave Paul’s Logos doctrine, half-revealed 


THE CHRISTOLOGICAL EPISTLES 319 


in 1 Cor. ii. as a philosophy he reserves for such 
as are ripe for it, I should like to set side by side 
with that chapter the Logos and avatar doctrine of 
one who may exist only in the form of a travesty 
of Paul, but who is more probably what all the 
earliest church fathers declare, the prime perverter 
of Christian doctrine, Simon Magus of Gitta in 
Samaria, the father of Gnosticism. In Acts he is 
simply caricatured, as we have seen; but Justin, 
his fellow countryman, Irenzus, Hippolytus, and 
Tertullian ! enable us to form some idea of his Wis- 
dom doctrine and thus to throw light upon Paul’s. 
For, whether this be the actual doctrine of Simon, 
or the mere fiction of Paul’s antagonists in the 
church, it presents a contemporary imitation of 
Pauline philosophy. 

According to Simon, Jesus had been indeed a 
divine incarnation, but he himself was a greater, 
“that Power (dvvauis) of God called Great.” For 
the Supreme Father descended among men to 
deliver them from captivity? to the angelic rulers 
of this world, whose dogmata are the rules of 
Mosaic and other prescribed systems of ethics (that 
is, arbitrary, not corresponding to natural right). 3 
Among the Jews he was revealed as the Son, among 


1 See the original passages quoted by Hilgenfeld, Ketzerge- 
schichte, pp. 178-180. 
2 Cf. Eph. iv. 8. 8 Col. ii. 20-23; Gal. iv. 3, 8-11. 


320 THE STORY OF ST. PAUL 


the Gentiles as the Spirit, among the Samaritans 
as the Father. To deceive the angels, who were 
jealous of their dominion, God, in this avatar, took 
on him among them the angelic form;! among 
men the human, so that they did not know him.? 

But I have said that Paul was more apocalyptist 
than either philosopher or mystagogue. And when 
I have explained what is meant by apocalypse, I 
shall have opened to you a third set of influences 
which are primarily Palestinian, but which among 
the Jews of Phrygian Asia also were combining 
with those of the mysteries and of philosophic spec- 
ulation to develop the ideas of the Christians to 
whom Paul is writing. For apocalypse is the Jew- 
ish substitute for cosmological philosophy, and we 
know from Acts, to say nothing of the Jewish magic 
papyri, how enormous was the influence in just this 
region of the “strolling Jews, exorcists,” and those 
that “‘ practised magic arts.” Consider, then, this 
third set of influences which Paul must control as 
part of the basis on which he builds. It represents 
the same world-tendencies already considered, but 
embodied in a Jewish literary species. 

Apocalypse differs from prophecy in making not 
the national future of Israel, but the destiny of 

1 Cf. Heb. ii. 16. 2 1 Cor. ii. 7, 8. 


3 The Revelation of John is an example of such Palestinian 
importation at a later time in the same region. 


THE CHRISTOLOGICAL EPISTLES 321 


creation and of the human race its subject-matter. 
Its universalistic outlook was an inevitable result 
of the absorption of Israel into the world empires. 
In this trait it shows its affinity with the Gospel. 
It differs from Greek cosmogonic speculation in that 
its eye rests mainly on the future, and only inciden- 
tally on the past; but there is a close resemblance. 
The seer is lifted into the heavens and permitted 
to inspect the structure of the universe, or told the 
story of creation, for the sake of the explanation 
of the wind-up of all things that he anticipates 
in the immediate future. He is led through the 
seven superimposed heavens, and shown the various 
hierarchies of angels in charge of all the mechan- 
ism of the universe: he is also made acquainted 
with the history of the bad spirits, whose interven- 
tion in history since the Fall accounts for the phy- 
sical and moral evil of the world. In all its concep- 
tion of angels and demons and the world conflict 
against the Prince of the power of the air, Jewish 
apocalypse is just as liberal as the Greek mystery 
in borrowing from Oriental mythology. In fact, for 
its Prince of evil, dominant in this world, it takes 
the same chaos monster and his satellites whom the 
hero of the “ mystery ” legend battles against, since 
the days of the Marduk-Tiamat, or the Heracles- 
Cerberus conflict. Only, of course, ‘instead of the 
Geos owryjp we have in apocalypse the Messiah com- 


322 THE STORY OF ST. PAUL 


ing, as in the Book of Daniel and the Enoch writ- 
ings, on the clouds of heaven, or, in the Apocalypse 
of Baruch, like Oannes, out of the sea. Also, of 
course, the world, which according to the Mosaic 
account of creation, and the Stoic as well, was made 
on man’s account, that he might have dominion 
over it, is given to Messiah and his people for their 
eternal inheritance. 

Now Paul is not only familiar with the apoca- 
lyptic cosmology ; he thoroughly sympathizes with 
its interpretation of Gen. i. 26-28. Wherever he 
has occasion to reveal his conception of the uni- 
verse, its structure, administration, and destiny, he 
uses the ideas, the aspirations, the angelology and 
demonology, and the terminology of apocalypse. 

These ideas are the groundwork of his thinking 
in regard to the universe. They are modified in- 
deed by his conception of Jesus as the Messiah ; 
they are more profoundly modified by his Stoic 
Logos doctrine, but it is absolutely certain that 
Paul’s Christianity did not come in to furnish him 
with a whole new stock of modern scientific ideas 
about the universe, any more than he manufactured a 
cosmology for himself. Paul quotes the apocalypses, 
believes in them, conceives of the universe and his- 
tory under their categories of angels and demons. 
Nay, he had apocalyptic visions himself, in which 
he believed he had been transported into the third 


THE CHRISTOLOGICAL EPISTLES 323 


heaven, and initiated into secrets hid from the an- 
gels. If Paul himself was saturated with these 
strange, to us grotesque, ideas, what shall we think 
of the Jewish “ prophets ” and “seers” who filled 
the Church with their marvelous visions, and of the 
conceptions of the common man! What most of 
all draws Paul closer to apocalypse than to Greek 
metaphysic is the fact that he is far more interested 
inthe future than in the past of the creation. He 
accepts a Logos doctrine on condition that it be 
understood that that Wisdom-spirit from God, or 
whatever you call it, be identified with the Spirit 
of Christ, so that all things may be said to have 
come into existence through him; but he is far 
more interested in the application of it to the future. 
He insists that Christ is the © as well as the A. 
For Paul cannot conceive of the universe as har- 
monized and coordinated in its condition of ultimate 
and ideal stability by any other agency than the 
Spirit of Christ, the bond of perfectness. All things 
must “consist” in Him. It is the good pleasure of 
God dvaxedadaioacba (literally to * head up a) 
all things in Christ. Just as a Stoie might say: 
*“ The Logos is the rational element of creation, 
accounting for it as a cosmos; therefore the crea- 
tion must achieve its ideal by this Logos element 
pervading and dominating all its parts, as man 
achieves his ideal when the Logos element in him 


324 THE STORY OF ST. PAUL 


fully dominates,” so Paul too conceives of the uni- 
verse as an organism, but the Logos-Christ is the 
unifying, vitalizing element corresponding to the 
blood or spirit. Christ is the Pleroma of God 
because his Spirit is that by which God * fills ” all 
existences with their content ; a spirit not so much 
of Wisdom as of redeeming Love. 

Now apocalyptic cosmology is not scientific, and 
our own ideas two thousand years hence may seem 
equally unscientific. Apocalypse is not even philo- 
sophical, as Greek speculation deserves to be called, 
however strange both are to our ideas. But neither 
Greek cosmology nor Jewish apocalypse is reli- 
giously objectionable, so long as a man is not dis- 
tracted by it from the true object of his faith. It 
does not hurt a man to believe there are as many 
devils around him as tiles on the housetops, so 
long as his faith in God makes him go his way 
and bid defiance to them. Luther believed in a 
“world of devils full, and threatening to undo us,” 
but had a complete antidote to the evils of his 
age’s superstition in his heroic faith in “ the right 
man on his side, the man of God’s own choosing.” 
So Paul. was not only a man of his time, but a 
Jew of his time. He believed in a Prince of the 
power of the air, temporarily controlling this world, 
and in spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly 
places, struggling to defeat man’s redemption which 


THE CHRISTOLOGICAL EPISTLES 325 


robs them of the inheritance. He conceived the 
universe as a complex organism of personal exist- 
ences. As on the title-page of Hobbes’s “ Levia- 
than,” we see the universe represented as a gigan- 
tic human being composed of an infinite multitude 
of microscopic men.! To Paul sin is at least quasi- 
personal, the angel of death is a real angel, an 
enemy who must be defeated by God in Christ. 
The “elements”? (crovxela tod xéopov) are for Paul 
semi-personal beings governing the physical order, 
and the structure and administration of the world 
involves angels and archangels, thrones, principali- 
ties, powers. The redemption, accordingly, con- 
cerns all these, because the Messiah, for whom 
with his people the universe was created,? must 
take away from them their lordship, and with his 
saints pronounce judgment on their control and 
stewardship. Having these ideas himself, Paul 
could not deny them to his converts; but what he 


1 The mental picture represented by Wisdom xviii. 15, 16, and 
dependent passages descriptive of the Logos-Christ, would per- 
haps be best reproduced in modern minds by the conception of a 
nebula in human form on the background of the midnight sky. 
See below, p. 331, note 2. 

2 See the articles, “‘ Elements” by Deissmann, in Encycl. Bibl., 
and by Massie in Hastings’ Bible Dictionary. 

3 Gen. i. 26; Ps. viii. 6; Rom. iv. 13; 1 Cor. ii. 9, iti. 22, xv. 26; 
Eph. i. 10,11; Heb. i. 2, ii. 8; Rev. xxi. 7; cf. 2 Esdr. vi. 55-59, 
vii. 11; Apoc. Baruch, xiv. 18,19, xv. 7, xxi. 24; Hermas, Vis. I. i. 
6, I. iv. 1, 1V.5; Mand. XII. iv., ete. 


326 THE STORY OF ST. PAUL 


could and did insist upon was the supremacy of 
Christ as the manifested Spirit of the divine love. 
He insisted on the insignificance of the weak and 
beggarly “ Elemental Beings” (crorxeta), which by 
nature are no gods, in comparison with the absolute 
lordship of Christ as the Son and Heir of God. 
He found the very framework of his thinking in 
the cosmological ideas of the Logos doctrine and 
the angelology and demonology of apocalypse ; but 
on one condition: Christ must dominate; other- 
wise there was danger. Jewish influence in the 
Hellenistic world was not objectionable for simple 
legalism only, but for a superstition which was rap- 
idly declining into mere magic and black art, a 
treatment of the Law literally as “‘an ordinance of 
angels,” and its prescriptions of touch not, taste not, 
handle not as an occult science of relations with 
angels and spirits, its feasts and calendar system 
as affording a hold upon the spirits of the sun and 
moon and heavenly bodies. This was evil and dan- 
gerous, and when, as now at Colosse, this type of 
Jewish magi, exorcists, and “ practicers of curious 
arts’ came about “ deluding his converts with per- 
suasiveness of speech,’ “making spoil of them 
through their philosophy and vain deceit, after 
human myths, after the Elemental Beings and 
not after Christ,” robbing them of their prize by a 
gratuitous self-humiliation and worship of the an- 


THE CHRISTOLOGICAL EPISTLES 327 


gels, men who vaunted their apocalyptic visions, 
puffed up by their own fleshly minds and not hold- 
ing fast the Head, men who taught his churches to 
discriminate in regard to meats and drinks, in re- 
gard to new moons and feast days and Sabbaths, 
then Paul was roused. He cared less about whether 
“all things were through Christ and we through 
him,” that is, the identification of the preéxistent 
Christ with the creative Wisdom or Logos, than 
he did about whether all things were “ unto him,” 
that is, the doctrine that Christ as head of re 
deemed humanity was the Son and Heir of God, 
who was to have the dominion over the creation. 
Tf so, his conquest of death by the power of God’s 
Spirit in him was the beginning and pledge of the 
great world-victory. The Strong Man Armed, tem- 
porarily master of this earthly house,! had been cast 
out by the Stronger than he. To the Corinthians 
Paul had written his idea of the teaching in the 
eighth and the one hundred and tenth Psalms. 
Christ is to abolish all (angelic) rule and authority 
and power, because he must reign until (as is 
written in the Psalm) he hath put all his enemies 
under his feet. The last to be abolished will be 
Death. For it says in the eighth Psalm: “ He put all 


1 The term for the Prince of this world is a play upon the name 
Beelzebub, which means “ Master of the house,’’ an Aramaic ren- 
dering of Zeds Odpavios. 


328 THE STORY OF ST. PAUL 


things in subjection under his feet.”’ So, then, hom- 
age paid to angels and principalities and powers, 
subjection to ordinances of meats and drinks, and 
observances directed to the Elemental Beings of 
the world, are disloyalty to Christ. Bid defiance to 
such existences. Be “ persuaded that neither death, 
nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things 
present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, 
nor depth, nor any other creature can separate us 
from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our 
Lord.” The one thing that Paul finds of supreme 
worth in apocalypse is the absolute victory and 
lordship of Christ; so the demons and angels and 
authorities, thrones, dominions, powers, and all 
their hierarchy, are no concern of ours. 

It has been the object of this digression to give , 
some idea of the mixed background of ideas 
against which we must trace the development of 
the Pauline doctrine of Christ, as the one “ of 
whom, through whom, and unto whom are all 
things ;” the main groundwork on which grew up, 
though not without codperation from the Pales- 
tinian side, the Johannine Logos doctrine, and 
ultimately our doctrine of the Trinity. In that 
hotbed of mingled theosophy, magic, gnosticism, 
speculation, and mysticism, Ephesus and Phrygian 
Asia, there were present, even in Paul’s day, (1) 
the conceptions of the Greek mystery religion, the 


THE CHRISTOLOGICAL EPISTLES 329 


Deliverer God or 6cés cwryp, the avatar doctrine of 
incarnation and mystic union of life with the life 
of God; (2) the cosmological ideas of the Logos- 
Wisdom doctrine, accounting for the universe by a 
unifying principle in God and man and nature ; (3) 
the angelology and demonology of Jewish apoca- 
lypse, with its doctrine of lordship over the crea- 
tion for Messiah and his people as the final aim of 
the Creator. All these ideas were in men’s minds. 
Christianity could not empty them out and leave 
them vacant, if it wished. Moreover, they were all 
of them simply crude and imperfect ways of appre- 
hending great truths. The task of the truly great 
herald of Christianity was to hold up Jesus Christ, 
the Son of God, as dominant over every one of 
them, his law of loving service the “ bond of per- 
fectness ” by which all things’ consist, and to let 
that one great principle work and work until all 
that was false and superstitious had gradually fil- 
tered down and out. 

That is precisely what Paul has done, and it 
simply remains for us to see how the twin epistles, 
~ Colossians-Ephesians, aim to hold fast for God and 
Christ just the essential true element in these pre- 
Christian conceptions, by fastening them to the 
fundamental principle of Paul’s gospel —-“* God in 
Christ reconciling the world,” — and leaving it for 
the future to decide the rest. 


330 THE STORY OF ST. PAUL 


Let us see first how the Logos idea enters into 
Paul’s letter to the Colossians. 

After the salutation and a thanksgiving for 
what he has heard through Epaphras of their faith 
and love, Paul begins a prayer for their increase 
in all spiritual wisdom and understanding in the 
knowledge of God and of his “ will ” — our des- 
tiny. Perhaps the foregoing attempt to explain the 
background of strange ideas on which Paul is 
working may elicit from us also an Amen to that 
prayer. For Paul means now to fight false gnosis 
with true, and starts with a definition of Christ as 
‘‘the Son of God’s love.” In Ephesians the paral- 
lel has the technical apocalyptic term, “ the Be- 
loved,” meaning the Elect, or foreordained Head of 
the Messianic kingdom. That is the first step of 
creation. But here Paul launches into the termi- 
nology of the Wisdom and Logos literature. This 
pre-creative Christ was the Absolute objectified, 
“the image of the invisible God,”’! and as such 
the medium of revelation, “the first-born of all 
creation.” 2 For in him — that is, in the sphere of 
the pervading Logos substance — “all things were 
created, in the heavens and upon the earth, things 


visible and things invisible.” Thus by the pre- 


1 Wisdom vii. 26 says of Wisdom, “ She is an unspotted mirror 
of the working of God and an image of his goodness.” 
2 So Wisdom in Prov. viii. 22 and elsewhere. 





THE CHRISTOLOGICAL EPISTLES 331 


creative decree of God the whole Pleroma — con- 
tent of the universe, personal and impersonal— was 
made to dwell in him. Paul then enumerates the 
orders of angelic beings created in the Logos, 
«« Thrones, Dominions, Principalities, Powers.’ For 
the exact definition of the rank and functions of 
these various angelic orders I must refer you to the 
apocalypses ;1 but all, says Paul, “‘ were created 
through the Son and for the Son,” because the 
Christ that is to be is a collective being. There is 
a pervasive common life of the codrdinated, har- 
monized universe which is Christ’s life. All indi- 
vidual existence will be subjected to that. Angelic 
beings must either be “ abolished,” or find their 
rank and order in it as subservient. So in Hebrews 
Paul’s disciple tells us that the angels are mere 
attendant spirits, sent forth to do service to those 
who are to be the heirs. Paul goes on to say that 
the Logos-Christ “is before all things and in him 
all consist ;” ? also that God effects the reconcilia- 

1 See the commentary of T. K. Abbott on Eph. i. 21 (Intern. 
Crit. Commentary, p. 33), where patristic authorities are cited on 
this point. 

2 In Wisdom i. 7, “ The Spirit of the Lord hath filled the world, 
and that which holdeth all things together hath knowledge of 
every utterance; ” cf. Wisdom vii.. 24, “‘ Wisdom pervadeth and 
penetrateth all things by reason of her pureness.’’ Wisdom to 
Hebrew thought seems half-personality, half-substance like the 


luminiferous ether. We have noted that where Hebrews and the 
Johannine writer employ the term “ Logos,” Paul uses the native 


332 THE STORY OF ST. PAUL 


tion of all beings to himself — brings about the 
harmony or codrdination of the universe — by the 
peace-making blood of the cross ; for the effect of 
this commendation of the divine love is not only on 
earthly beings, but on the heavenly also.1 

This gives us insight into Paul’s way of meeting 
the speculative Logos doctrine. This intermediate 
Being demanded by philosophy as the agent and 
medium of creation, revelation, and redemption is 
nothing else than the spirit that was in Christ, 
called “* Wisdom ” in the Jewish literature, called 
“‘ Logos” by Philo and the Greeks, but nothing 
else but the Spirit of God himself. ; 

But in the second chapter Paul attacks directly 
the Jewish theosophists. Against their advocacy of 


Palestinian “‘ Wisdom,” which had the disadvantage of becoming 
a feminine when translated into Greek. In Wisdom the Angel of 
Redemption (identifiable with Wisdom) is twice called Logos, in 
xvi. 5-13 (cf. Jn. iii. 14), and xviii. 15, 16. The latter passage 
throws light upon Eph. iv. 13. The “stature of Christ” in the 
Gospel of Peter (x. 40) and Gnostic writings is taken literally. 

1 Here is the root of the Gnostic representation of the cross as 
the central point of discrimination of the universe. See Acts of 
John, on the cross of wood and the cross of light. The latter in 
the Gnostic systems is called ‘‘ Horos” (Boundary), as separating 
upper from lower (spiritual from material) and right from left 
(good from evil). Paul’s thought is that the manifestation of the 
love of God in the cross either “ reconciles’’ those who were 
“ enemies,’’ or else God ‘‘ triumphs over them in it.” It is central 
in history and central in the universe of being. Gnostic extrava- 
gances are an elaboration of this. 


THE CHRISTOLOGICAL EPISTLES 333 


the mysterious virtue of circumcision he holds up 
baptism as a rite that gives mystic union with the 
life of our Deliverer God. All that which is con- 
tained in the Godhead takes bodily expression in 
Christ, and in him we become participant in a 
divine existence, for he is the head of every Prin- 
cipality and Power. In baptism we are buried in a 
participation in his death, putting off the body of 
flesh and receiving the forgiveness of our sins. In 
the imparted Spirit we become participant with 
him in his resurrection, ‘‘ putting on” his life. In 
the cross God removed the bond of the Law which 
held us. It was an obligation which the angelic 
powers could claim against us. He blotted it out; 
he took it out of the way; he nailed it to the 
eross. For in the cross God made an open mani- 
festation of himself, divesting himself of the inter- 
mediate beings by whom his manifestation of his 
will had previously been made.! In the tragedy of 


1 Better perhaps with the A. V., “stripping off for himself” (7. e. 
“spoiling,” as a warrior spoils his defeated foe) ; for the figure is 
based on Ps. lxviii. 18, God triumphing over his enemies, and per- ‘ 
haps was suggested by the Parable of the Strong Man Armed 
(the Prince of this World), whose vessels (here and in Ps. Ixviii., 
captives) are taken from him by the Stronger than he (the Spirit 
of God in Christ). This parable is already interpreted by the 
second century fathers in the sense of the mystery myths as de- 
picting Christ’s conflict with the powers of the under-world (Hui- 
dekoper’s Works, vol. ii., ‘‘ Christ’s Mission to the Under-world ’’). 
Eph. iv. 8 ff.; Col. ii. 15, show the beginnings of this tendency. 


334 THE STORY OF ST. PAUL 


Calvary he made a spectacle of the demonic 
powers and led a triumphal procession of deliver- 
ance.! So, then, the life of those who participate by 
the Spirit in the resurrection of Christ is a life 
whose centre is with Christ in God. We shall be 
manifested in glory when Christ, whose being is 
our being, stands revealed. Things above, there- 
fore, not things on the earth, should control our 
interest and aspiration. So Paul passes to the 
hortatory part of his epistle, bidding his readers 
put on the New Man, that one organism of the new 
humanity, the Christ of whom we are all members, 
not an organization, but an organism, which is in 
process of creation in the spiritual image of God, 
without the distinctions of Jew or Gentile, Greek 
or barbarian, bond or free, male or female; for the 
new creation is a Christ not only in all but who 
is all. 

A few words of more specific direction how to 
put on this new man, namely, by cultivating the 
spirit of love and mutual service, by infusing our 
- human social and family relations with the spirit of 
Christ’s love, and the epistle closes with requests 
for prayer and greetings from friends. 


1 For the meaning of this obscure figure, see Eph. iy., deyelop- 
ing Ps. lxviii. 18 and the note preceding. 


LECTURE X 


PAUL’S REVELATION OF THE MYSTERY AND 
FAREWELL TO THE CHURCHES 


In Colossians, as we have seen, there are hints of 
a conception that occupies Paul’s mind, correspond- 
ing in some degree to that of the Greek mys- 
tery. Three times over, in fact, he refers there to 
his gospel as “the mystery of God.” In i. 26 it is 
“the mystery hid from all ages and generations 
but now manifested to the saints.” In i. 27 he says, 
« God was pleased to make known to them among 
the Gentiles what is the riches of the glory of this 
mystery ;” and he defines it as “Christ in them 
the hope of glory.” They “ put on Christ,” as the 
Deliverer God of the Greek mysteries was “ put 
on” by his devotees, insuring to them participa- 
tion in his immortality. In ii. 2 he says he is striy- 
ing in prayer for them and the Laodiceans and the 
rest whom he had never seen personally, for their 
knitting together in love, and their obtaining full- 
ness of understanding to comprehend “the mys- 
tery of God, which is Christ, in the understanding 
of whose person are involved all the treasures of 
philosophy and science.” In Colossians, therefore, 


336 THE STORY OF ST. PAUL 


we can guess at Paul’s “mystery of God.” It 
involved somehow his conception of Christ as the 
being through whom and unto whom are all things, 
in whom all things consist, a Logos doctrine — cos- 
mological ; an avatar doctrine — soteriological ; and 
an apocalypse — eschatological. But we need to 
read the fuller companion epistle, Ephesians, and 
above all to read it in the light of contemporary 
writings, some of the very books which may have 
been included in Paul’s reading for his winter of 
imprisonment, to get a full, clear view. 

The whole first part of Ephesians, comprising 
the first three chapters, is constructed like 1 Thes- 
salonians by elaboration of the conventional episto- 
lary thanksgiving and supplication. There is no 
doctrinal section, for Paul has “ cast his remarks 
into the form of a prayer.” The subject of the 
thanksgiving is God’s glorious creative and redemp- 
tive decree, as made known to us in “ the mystery 
of his will;” and on this Paul elaborates through 
thirteen verses. That is characteristic of the man 
whose cosmological ideas are based on apocalypse, 
and on the rabbinic doctrine of the foreordina- 
tion or election of Messiah and his people to be 
‘heirs of the world,” as God’s reason for creat- 
ing it. 

Thereafter, in i. 15, Paul begins an attempt to 
tell how, having heard of the faith of his readers, 


PAUL’S REVELATION AND FAREWELL 337 


he has been unceasingly praying “ that God may 
give them a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the 
knowledge of him, so that they may appreciate the 
contents of Christian aspiration ;” but at the men- 
tion of the “riches ” of God given us in Christ as 
the heir, and the “ power’ of God shown in Christ’s 
resurrection, wherein we participate, he is led off 
into a digression. God’s power shown in the resur- 
rection is the same which will accomplish the work 
of redemption, raising from the death of carnality 
and sin a twin people of God, a new humanity de- 
rived from Jew and Gentile. The common access 
of both in one Spirit unto the Father was effected 
by the cross. We shall hear more of this avatar 
doctrine at a later point. After this digression in 
iii. 1 he begins again to tell how he is praying for 
his readers’ enlightenment, but a second time is led 
off into a reference to the “ revelation of the mys- 
tery ” specially given to him, apropos of his speak- 
ing of himself as a prisoner “ on behalf of you 
Gentiles.” For the third and last time he resumes 
in iii. 14-21, and this time completes the sentence. 
He prays to God that they may be strengthened 
with power through his Spirit in the inward man, 
that after rooting and grounding in love (more 
important than knowledge) they may be strong to 
comprehend the full dimensions, — the context alone 
tells us of what, namely, of the inheritance prepared, 


338 THE STORY OF ST. PAUL 


the city which Revelation depicts in cubical form, 
the Pleroma or contents of creation, — and thus to 
know the surpassing love of Christ. This portion 
of the letter winds up with a suitable doxology. 
The second half, comprising chapters iv.—vi., is 
an appeal to them to do the part which belongs to 
men, to achieve this divine ideal of the Pleroma, 
or God, in Christ, “ filling” creation. For here in 
chapter iv. we come upon Paul’s avatar doctrine, 
if I may call it so, his conception of God in Christ 
as a Geos cwryp “ making peace” throughout the 
universe, the idea presented in Colossians under the 
figure of a triumphal procession. He takes his 
departure from a standpoint of absolute monism: 
the cosmos is one great body or organism, dependent 
on, existing in, the “one God and Father of all, 
who is above all, and through all, and in all;” but 
this pure monism is supplemented by a Pleroma 
doctrine of the “ filling ” of the cosmos by God in 
Christ.!. This Paul expresses by an adaptation of 
Ps. Ixviii. 18, which makes it read like one of the 
mystery myths. In the person of Christ, God de- 
scended from heaven, passed through the under- 
world, ascended again to heaven, and thence by the 
outpoured Spirit infuses with his own divine per- 
sonality the whole organism of a redeemed ecrea- 


1 Based on Wisd. i.7: “ The Spirit of the Lord hath filled the 
world, even that which holdeth all things together.” 


PAUL’S REVELATION AND FAREWELL 339 


tion.1 God’s Spirit and life are thus made to 
course through all the parts of this Pleroma, the 
cosmos conceived as a living organism. Then the 
application. We as Christians must be actively 
participant in this life of God, not, as formerly, 
“alienated ” from it. We must individually “ put 
on Christ,” being renewed in the spirit of our mind. 
The social relations of life between neighbor and 
neighbor, the relation of Christians to one another 
in the brotherhood, the reciprocal duties of wives 
and husbands, children and parents, slaves and 
masters, are so many “joints of supply” in the 
great collective body, whose head is Christ, — chan- 
nels for the diffusion of the Spirit of love, the 
unifying Spirit of Christ and God. Such is the 
theme of Eph. iv.—vi. The epistle concludes with 
an exhortation to the readers to equip themselves 
with the armor of God against the hierarchy of 
demonic powers that must be overcome in the soul’s 
ascent to its seat of victory. This also is based on 

1 Tn the doctrine attributed to Simon Magus (see below), this 
Logos which descends and ascends is identified with God. In the 
Christian apocalypse, Visio Isaie (about 150), Christ in person 
makes the descent and ascent, assuming in each of the seven hea- 
yens, as he descends, the form of its denizens, so as not to be re- 
cognized, — but ascending in full glory. On its mythological side, 
this apocalypse is in direct line of descent from the descent of 
Ishtar in Babylonian legend, who divests herself successively of 


her garments at the seven portals. On its Christian side, it simply 
gives the concrete form of vision to the avatar doctrine of Paul. 


340 THE STORY OF ST. PAUL 7 


Is. lix. 17, where God is described as putting on 
his armor to fight for his people; but even in Isa- 
iah we cannot but feel a suspicion of the influence 
of mythological descriptions of the arming of the 
Deliverer God (Marduk? ), and when we find the 
Isaian picture still further elaborated in. Wisdom 
v. 17-23, and thus handed on to Paul, we can 
scarcely resist the impression that mythology has 
found its own again in Eph. vi. 10-17. 

To fill in this somewhat bare outline of the 
epistle, and for the sake of showing something of 
the atmosphere of the time, let me adduce certain 
kindred speculations of the later perverters of Pau- 
linism, the Gnostic sects. The author of the J: chan: 
nine literature rightly touches these in the very heart 
of their departure from true Paulinism, when he 
insists, as Paul had done, that the vital point is 
the ethical one, the ‘“ new commandment.” To 
Paul, cosmological and soteriological ideas alike 
were mere vehicles for his principle — Jesus’ prin- 
ciple — of the divine Jove as the key to both crea- 
tion and redemption; but even a later travesty of 
Paulinism can illustrate his use of the conception 
of a descent~of the Logos into the world in the 
person of Christ.“In 1 Cor. ii. 8 the “rulers of 
this world” (7. e. angels in charge of the nations, 
the “ stewards and governors” of Gal. iv. 8) are 
conceived as not recognizing him, but compassing 


PAUL’S REVELATION AND FAREWELL 341 


his crucifixion, as the vinedressers in the parable 
of Jesus slay the heir, that the inheritance may be 
theirs. In Eph. iv. 8 the descent of this same 
Logos or Wisdom spirit extends to the lowest sphere 
of all, the region “ under the earth,” where salva- 
tion and liberation are proclaimed to the captives 
of Death, the arch-enemy.t The ascent is described 
in terms which form the Old Testament counter- 
part of the “ascents ” or apotheoses of mythology. 
In Ps. xlvii. 5, 8, lvii. 11, there are traces, but 
Paul boldly borrows the description of Jehovah’s , 
triumphal march in Ps. Ixviii. 18; for Christ is to 
him simply the embodiment of that Spirit of God 
which “ filleth all things,” and Jesus himself had 
quoted Ps. ex. 1: “The Lord said unto my Lord, 
Sit thou at my right hand, till I make thine enemies 
[according to Paul these are the world-powers of 
whom Death is last] the footstool of thy feet.” 2 

I have already referred to the doctrine of the 


1 In the Visio Isaie the Wisdom-Christ receives commandment 
to descend to the under-world (Sheol), but not to the lewest depth 
of all (Gehenna). 

2 This avatar of the Wisdom-Spirit-Christ passes from Eph. 
iv. 9 to 1 Pet. iii. 19, and thence to the early fathers. We see it in 
the clauses of the creed: He descended into Hell; He rose; He 
ascended into heaven and sitteth at the right hand of God. In 
medieval times it develops elaborately as the doctrine of the 
Harrowing of Hell. Of course the mythological element is pre- 
historic. Only the adaptation to the scheme of redemption origi- 
nates with Paul. 


342 THE STORY OF ST. PAUL 


descent of the Father! as taught by Simon Magus, 
“to deliver men from those angelic potentates to 
’ deceive whom he himself assumed the same like- 
ness, and among men the likeness of a man.” 
His most famous successor was Basilides, who ex- 
panded the limited Pleroma of Simon, which con- 
sisted, like the Jewish, of seven heavens, into 365 
heavens, according to the accepted solar year.? 
According to Irenzus? Basilides expanded the 
corresponding “ names and principalities and angels 
_and powers, and showed how the name in which 
the Saviour descended and ascended was Caulacau.” 
A later sect* gave the three Logoi the names 
Caulacau, Saulasau, Zeésar, which are correctly ex- 
plained by Epiphanius as nothing but the Hebrew 


1 As Cheetham (Mysteries, Pagan and Christian) has shown, it 
was the tendency among enlightened devotees of the mysteries to 
merge the various gods and demigods to whom the function of 
the delivering men by battle with the powers of death and dark- 
ness was assigned, in the countless forms of the myth, into the 
single 5 @eds of monotheistic belief. This is of course the case 
with the Samaritan Simon, whose Logos doctrine was a Sabellian 


~—_Trinitarianism. 


2 Jerome tells us that he gave the supreme God the name 
Abraxas because its numerical value was 365 (A=1, B=2, 
P=100, A= 1, 2= 200, A= 1, = = 60), “as the Gentiles call him 
Mei@pas ’? (=365). 

3 Her. I. xxiv. 3-7. 

* Hippolytus (Philos. v. 8) makes the Naassene Gnosties say : 
ovrot cicly of rpets bwepoyKor Adyot KavAakav ZavAacav Zenoap 
= Is. xxviii. 13. 


PAUL’S REVELATION AND FAREWELL 343 


for “‘Line upon line, precept upon precept, here a 
little,” in Is. xxvii. 13. What has that to do with 
Basilides’ idea of the “ descent and ascent of the 
Saviour”? In Is. xxviii. 13 this is said to be the 
Word (Logos) of the Lord unto the scornful “rulers 
(4pxovres) that rule my people;” and these “rulers” 
' are demonic, for they say: “ We have made a cove- 
nant with Death, and with Sheol we have an agree- 
ment.” We have already seen how the Christian 
seer of Visio Jsaiw conceives this descent and 
ascent of Christ without the subtleties of the 
metaphysical Logos doctrine, or the mythological 
feature of the conflict with the powers of darkness. 
For the sake, then, of appreciating in how realistic 
a sense and how widely these ideas prevailed in the 
Church, take the good orthodox father, Justin, 
writing about 145, and supporting Paul’s state- 
ment that the “rulers of this world (dpxovres rod 
koopov Tovrov) did not know the Wisdom of God in 
a mystery; for had they known it, they would not 
have crucified the Lord of glory.” Says Justin: 
“ For because those who are rulers (dpxovtes) in hea- 
ven saw that his appearance was humble and without 
honor, and that he had no glory, they enquired, be- 
cause they did not recognize him, Who is this King 
of glory?” (Ps. xxiv.8). In the same mythologi- 
zing sense Basilides continues: ‘ Therefore he that 


1 Dial. xxxvi. 


344 THE STORY OF ST. PAUL 


has learned these things [mystic formularies] and 
recognized all the angels and their causes of being? 
will become invisible and incomprehensible to all 
the angels and potentates, just as Caulacau was.” 
I must ask indulgence for this excursus into 
‘“‘ Ephesian letters,” magic, and “ worship of the 
angels.” It is the travesty which throws most 
light upon the original. The first half of Ephesians, 
as I said, contains Paul’s Logos doctrine ; but in 
the apocalyptic form which the Jew is wont to give 
to his cosmogonic ideas. The revelation of God’s 
purpose in creating the universe (it was intended 
for the inheritance of his Son the Beloved and the 
Beloved People) is “ the wisdom of God in a mys- 
tery, even the wisdom that hath been hidden,” a 
‘mystery which from all ages hath been hid in 
God who created all things,” but which has been 
given Paul to proclaim, “ that the eternal purpose 
of God’s wisdom, which he purposed in Christ, 
might appear in the development of the Church, 
even to the principalities and the powers in the 
heavenly places.” For this “mystery of Christ 


1 See Slavonic Enoch, xxiv. 3. God speaks: ‘*‘ Not even to my 
angels have I told my secrets, nor haye I informed them of their 
origin, nor have they understood my infinite creation which I tell 
thee of to-day.” Cf. 1 Pet.i. 12. Basilides’ magic formule for es- 
caping the world-rulers show the influence of Egyptian magic. 
Compare the formule of the Book of the Dead, by which the dis- 
embodied spirit passes the hostile world-rulers. 


PAUL’S REVELATION AND FAREWELL 345 


which in other generations was not made known 
unto the sons of men,” the sphinx-riddle of crea- 
tion which the philosophers have vainly tried to 
solve, is also and specifically “hid from the an- 
gels.” 1 The revelation of Christ as Heir and Lord 
is thus a manifestation of God’s creative and re- 
demptive plan, a Logos doctrine and an avatar 
doctrine in one. In him as the Man that is to be, the 
“first-born of many brethren,” the creation, which 
“ groans in subjection to ‘ vanity’ while it waits for 
the manifestation of the sons of God,” beholds the 
dawn of a new creative day. In the face of the glo- 
rified Son and Heir of God we havea “ revelation 
of the mystery which hath been kept in silence 
through times eternal, but now, manifested by the 
Scriptures of the Prophets, according to the com- 
mandment of the eternal God, is made known to 
all the nations unto obedience of faith.” 

Wesee, then, why 1 Peter, building on the basis of 
Ephesians, declares that the prophets were search- 

1 Thus in Slavonic Enoch, as the seer ascends through the 
seven heavens, the angels peer after him, eager to learn the mys- 
tery of their existence. In the seventh heayen, whence they are 
excluded, God says to him, “ Enoch, the things which thou sawest 
at rest or in motion [the mechanism of the universe] were com- 
pleted by me. I will tell thee now from the beginning what things 
I created from the non-existent, and what visible things from 
the invisible. Not even to my angels have I told my secrets, nor 


have I informed them of their origin, nor have they understood 
my infinite creation which I tell thee of to-day.” 


346 THE STORY OF ST. PAUL 


ing into the meaning of the Logos-Wisdom, the 
Spirit of Christ which was in them, unable to 
know the meaning of their own prophecies, and 
that even angels long to stoop down and peer 
into (wapaxiya) these things. ‘To the author of 
1 Peter also the knowledge of Christ is the solution 
of the problems of apocalypse. Again we see why 
Paul in 1 Cor. ii. 6-16, speaking of the philoso- 
phy he had not used, and quoting a Jewish writ- 
ing called the Apocalypse of Elias, declares that 
the spirit of Christ in Christian apostles and pro- 
phets gives them a perception of the creative pur- 
pose of God, just as a man’s own spirit gives him the 
consciousness of his own purposes.! The creative 
Wisdom, first-born of God, his agent in making the 
worlds, was “the mind of Christ.” Hence we, in 
whom it resides, are able to speak ‘* God’s wisdom 
in a mystery, even that which hath been hidden,” 
not known to the (angelic) rulers of this world 
who are to be abolished. The content of this rev- 
elation is God’s foreordaining purpose when he 
made the worlds unto our glory; for, to speak with 


1 So Solomon, in Wisdom vii. 17-28, attributes his knowledge 
of “the things that exist, the constitution of the world and opera- 
tion of the Elements, the beginning, end, and middle of [calendar] 
times, alternation of solstices and changing of seasons,” ete., to 
‘‘the spirit of Wisdom ” which came to him. “ All things, seeret 
or manifest, have I learned, because she that is the artificer of all 
things taught me, even Wisdom.” 


PAUL’S REVELATION AND FAREWELL 347 


“‘ Elias,” the final cause of creation was God’s pur- 
pose to prepare “ Things which eye saw not and 
ear heard not, nor man imagined, for the race of 
men that should love him.” This is Paul’s way of 
presenting Christ as the solution of the problems 
of cosmogony and the Logos doctrine. If in one 
place he declares that the mystery was “ hid in God 
as Creator of all things,” and in another as “hid 
in Christ,” and in still another as being itself 
“Christ in you the hope of glory,” all these are 
unified and explained by the earliest of his utter- 
ances on the subject (1 Cor. ii. 6-16), where 
“the mind of Christ” is expressly identified with 
the consciousness of God in creation, or in other 
words the creative Wisdom of Proy. viii. 22-31. 

There is a contemporary Jewish writing which 
might well have been among the books of Paul’s 
prison-library, called the Assumption of Moses, 
from which we can see how Paul must have felt, 
like every Jew, the proud consciousness that Moses 
and the prophets knew incomparably more than all 
the Greek cosmological philosophers regarding the 
why and how of creation. But like every Christian, © 
he must also have conceived that the manifestation 
of Christ as the Heir of creation gave the Christian 
incomparably more knowledge on this point than 
even Moses and the prophets. The Jewish concep- 
tion is as follows : — 


348 THE STORY OF ST. PAUL 


“God created the world on behalf of his people [a con- 
ception based on Gen. i. 26-28, which pervades contemporary 
Jewish and Christian writings 1]; but he was not pleased to 
manifest this purpose of creation from the foundation of the 
world, in order that the Gentiles might thereby be convicted, 
yea, to their own humiliation might convict one another 
[the reference is to the mutually conflicting speculations of 
Greek cosmological philosophy, in contrast with the plain, 
revealed statements of Genesis]. Accordingly he designed 
and deyised me [Moses], and prepared me before the 
foundation of the world, that I should be the mediator of 
his covenant [the promise to give the world for an inherit- 
ance to his people].” ? 


The thanksgiving of Eph. i. 3-14 has the 
same theme as this passage from the Assumptio 
Mosis, the same as 1 Cor. ii. 6-16, namely, the 
purpose of God in founding the world, only Paul 
presents a Logos doctrine cast in the mould of 
apocalypse, and finds the ultimate ground of 
creation in love as the motive of the divine will. 
Three times over he reiterates his theme. First in 
i. 5: God’s foreordaining election of us, before he 
founded the world, in the person of the Beloved, 
having in love foreordained us to be an adoption, 
through Jesus Christ, unto himself, according to 
the gracious decree of his will. Then ini. 9: It is 


1 Cf. 2 Esdr. vi. 55-59, vii. 11.; Apoc. Baruch, xiy. 18, 19, 
xy. 7, xxi. 24; Hermas, Vis. IL. iv. 1, Vis. L. i. 6, iv., v.; Mand. 
xii. 4, ete. 

2 Assumptio Mosis, i. 12-14. 


PAUL’S REVELATION AND FAREWELL 349 


the revealed mystery of God’s will according to the 
gracious decree which he enacted in the person of 
Christ, for an administration of the full content 
(Pleroma) of the ages, to “head up (dvaxedadat- 
ocacGar) all things in Christ.”” Then a third time 
in i. 11: “In predetermining all things according 
to the counsel of his will, he predesignated us to 
be an occasion of the praising of his glory.” Paul 
even returns again to this same theme in iii. 1- 
13, where he wishes his readers to appreciate his 
consciousness of initiation by a special revelation 
into the mystery of God’s creative purpose. This 
mystery, he says, was made known to him by reve- 
lation, as he wrote before (in the first chapter) in 
"few words, whereby they can realize how he has 
been given an insight by God into the mystery of 
Christ. Then he continues: In other generations it 
was not made known unto the sons of men as it 
hath now (since the resurrection) been revealed to 
Christ’s consecrated Apostles and prophets by the 
Spirit (the gift of insight, gnosis, and prophecy). 
Unworthy as he is, Paul also has been called to an 
apostleship by God’s revelation of Christ in him. 
In particular Christ had been revealed to Paul as 
the Head of every man, the spiritual Being who 
forms the Pleroma and gives unity to the new 
organism of creation. Paul, therefore, felt called 
to make all men see what is the economy of the 


350 THE STORY OF ST. PAUL 


mystery which from all ages hath been hid in God, 
who created all things. God meant that now in the 
last age there should be displayed before the whole 
hierarchy of angelic beings, throughout the orders 
of successive heavens, his providential wisdom. 
This will be the case when they witness what he 
does for the Church, his adoptive people, accom- 
plishing the eternal purpose which he decreed in the 
person of Christ, the original Elect One. Christ 
and his people in mystic union of life will be mani- 
fested in perfect dominion. Then all the redeemed 
hierarchies will burst into praise of the glory of 
his grace, as the Gentile nations stood in wonder, 
saying, “ What hath God wrought?” when Israel 
was redeemed out of Egypt. Such is the theme of - 
doxology and prayer in Eph. i.—ii. 

The key-word by which Paul solves the prob- 
lems of Logos-Wisdom speculation, whether crea- 
tive or redemptive, is the word “love.” The Logos- 
Wisdom spirit in God and man and nature is a 
necessary postulate of cosmogonic philosophy. Paul 
admits that. But the dominant attribute of that 
mediating personality, or quasi-personality, is not 
the intellectual ; we do not chiefly enlarge our par- 
ticipation in it by “ enlightenment” (yécis). It is 
moral. It is the will of God (Oya God) which 
was active in the creation, and that “will” was 
love. He created not for his own sake but for our 


PAUL’S REVELATION AND FAREWELL 351 


sakes.1 The first step was in love to elect the 
Beloved, and us in him, that we might be an adop- 
‘tion, to inherit the whole. Therefore the preéxis- 
tent Christ-spirit is indeed to be identified with the 
Wisdom of God and the Power of God, but above 
and beyond all, with the Love of God. 

Let me, then, simply read to you the opening 
thanksgiving of Ephesians in a translation which 
aims at greater exactness by means of greater 
freedom. 


“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus 
Christ, who has endowed us with every blessing belonging 
to spiritual existence, as sharers in the life of Christ, which 
pervades the Heavenly regions. For God Elected us in 
Christ’s person before the founding of the world, designing 
us to be holy and without blemish in his sight. By an act of 
love he Foreordained us to be an Adoption of sons to him- 
self through the agency of Jesus the Messiah. It was the 
gracious decree of his ordaining Will, which aimed at the 
praising of his glory, as manifested in the grace wherewith 
he endowed us in the person of the Beloved.” In a word, we 


1 A Stoic doctrine in which Paul heartily sympathized. 

2 This Messianic title is the favorite one in the Visio Isaice, 
and some other examples of the apocalyptic literature. It is also 
used in the Enoch fragment quoted in Epistle of Barnabas: “ God 
shortened the days that his Beloved might hasten and come to 
his inheritance.”’ It is also employed in the Voice from heaven 
at the Baptism and the Transfiguration : ‘‘ Thou art my Son, the 
Beloved,” resting there on Is. xlii.1. Its special appropriateness 
here is its relation to the “ beloved”’ people, the people of Elec- 
tion. Titles of the Messiah in general are formed by the singular 
of the term applied to the “ chosen” people. 


352 THE STORY OF ST. PAUL 


have in him a Redemption of our own (eclipsing the redemp- 
tion of Israel out of Egypt) through Jesus’ blood, consisting 
in the forgiveness of our trespasses. This is in accordance 
with the abounding liberality of God, the riches of his grace 
which we experience in being supplied with the Gifts of wis- 
dom and insight. For God has made known to us believers 
the Mystery of his Will. Christians understand the gracious 
determination to which God gave expression in the person 
of Christ, contemplating an economy of the whole series 
of ages, a determination to bring all things into relation 
to Christ as their head, both the existences located in the 
heavens and those located on the earth. This is the same 
Christ in whose person we Jews, who first cherished the 
Messianic hope, were made God’s Heirs ; for we were fore- 
ordained to this by the divine decree of One who does not 
fail to accomplish the purposes of his wisdom, and who in- 
tended us to be an occasion of the praising of his glory : the 
same Christ in whom you Gentiles also believed, when you 
heard the word of the truth, the glad tidings of your salva- 
tion, and were stamped with his Seal! when the Holy Spirit, 
the promised Gift of the Messianic age, was poured out on 
you. For this is the earnest-money of the full Inheritance ; 
pointing to God’s Redemption of us as an Own Possession, 
with the design that his glory should be praised.” 


I need not repeat Paul’s prayer that his readers 
may be given “a spirit of wisdom and revelation 
in the complete knowledge of God; haying the 
eyes of their heart enlightened so as to appreci- 
ate what the hope set before us by the calling of 
God into his kingdom involves.” It leads him, as 
we saw, to digress upon the inconceivable wealth 


1 A term of the mystery rites. 2 Another mystery term. 


PAUL’S REVELATION AND FAREWELL 353 


there is in the inheritance of glory God intends for 
the saints, and the irresistible power that is work- 
ing in us toward this end, seeing that power is 
the same working of divine omnipotence which was 
exhibited when God raised Christ from the dead, 
and promoted him over the heads of all angelic 
hierarchies. For God not only brought him out 
from the domain of death, but as the 110th Psalm 
says, “made him to sit at his own right hand on his 
throne in heaven.” So all angelic and demonic hier- 
archies, in this world and the future, fall below him, 
as the 8th Psalm says, “ He put all things in sub- 
jection under his feet.”” So God has given Christ 
to the Church as the head is united to the body; 
and not only so, but as a Head of all existences. 
Christ is the Pleroma of the universe. He is that 
wherein God gives to all existences their content 
of being. This is the power that is raising us above 
the heads of all hierarchies of angelic beings. 
But here we have taken up already the avatar 
doctrine. You know how the rhapsody runs on in 
the second chapter, the raising of a dead people 
to life (the figure rests ultimately on the vision 
of the valley of dry bones in Ezek. xxxvii.), by 
* quickening together with Christ,” and exaltation 
by participation in his nature toa share in his royal 
tule. Gentiles and Jews share together in this 
raising from the death of fleshliness and sin. Then 


354 THE STORY OF ST. PAUL 


the overcoming of the enmity, the cross, breaking 
down the barrier between man and God, and man 
and man as well; so that Isaiah’s word, “ Peace, 
peace to him that is far off, and to him that is 
nigh, saith the Lord; and I will heal him,” is ful- 
filled. The figure is that of the Living Temple 
ereated on the basis of apostles and prophets, in 
which there is no more a middle wall of partition - 
between the inner sanctuary and the “ court of the 
Gentiles,” no longer a veil dividing God’s shrine 
from men, but the whole is a building erected by 
God on Christ as the corner-stone, having various 
parts, but all as a whole a Habitation of God per- 
vaded by the Spirit. Then in iii. 1-18, as I have 
already shown, another return to the “ mystery of 
Christ” spoken of before in few words, whereby 
when they read they will be assured of the fact 
that God really did grant him a revelation of the 
secret of his purpose in creating the world, namely, 
to make of Jews and Gentiles fellow heirs, and fel- 
low members of the body, and fellow partakers of 
the (Messianic) promise, in the person of Christ 
Jesus. This half of the epistle concludes with the 
prayer that they may be filled with the spirit of 
love and understanding. 

By paraphrasing thus Eph. i.—ii., a glimpse may 
perhaps be afforded of Paul’s handling of the con- 
ceptions of Jewish apocalypse and the Greek Logos 


PAUL’S REVELATION AND FAREWELL 355 


doctrine, how the revelation of God’s Son in Paul 
was to him the key to God’s purpose in creation, 
for the reason that it conveyed a revelation of its 
destiny in the divine motive of love. 

It remains to illustrate from contemporary writ- 
ings Paul’s mode of dealing with the avatar doc- 
trine of the mysteries, the descent and ascent of 
the Deliverer God achieving immortality for his vo- 
taries. This theme, already glanced at in the para- 
graph on the Power of God, i. 19-ii. 10, underlies 
the practical section Eph. iv.—vi., because the section 
is an exhortation to participate in the redemptive 
process by cultivating this redeeming, unifying 
Spirit, the mind of Christ. It rests on Paul’s Ple- 
roma doctrine, God “filling ”’ the cosmos, as in 
Wisdom i. 7, the Spirit of the Lord, that which 
holdeth all things together, “ hath filled the world.” 


“There exists,” he says, “but a single cosmic body, a 
single universal Spirit, a single common destiny, namely, 
the hope presented in the divine vocation, God’s call to us to 
be his sons, heirs of his creation, joint heirs with the Messi- 
anic Son. For all existences there is one common Lord, one 
common faith, one baptism wherein our life is merged into 
the divine life. There is one God and Father of all, at once 
transcendent over all being, penetrating all, filling all.” 


How, then, is the Pleroma of God achieved ? How 
does God oceupy the whole creation of being with 
his own life? Paul finds an expression for his 


356 THE STORY OF ST. PAUL 


thought in Ps. lxviii., a psalm very diffieult and 
obscure, and which for that very reason, perhaps, 
had been seized upon, even before Paul’s writing, 
as a basis for apocalyptic mysticism. 

We have seen that Paul shows close relation 
in the first chapter with the writing of about 
30 a. D., called the Assumption of Moses. The 
legend which gives the book its name appears to 
be based on one of several interpretations of the 
passage from Ps. lxviii. 18, which Paul now quotes. 
How could it be said of God, it was argued, that 
he ascended on high and took tribute from men? ? 
The one who led the captivity captive (took 
prisoner the enemy’s prisoners) was Moses, who 
released Israel from Egyptian bondage. It was 
therefore Moses who ascended on high. This is 
the rendering of the Targum. Paul is exegetically 
more correct in insisting that God is the subject. 
The psalmist does refer to God when he says: 
“Thou hast ascended on high.” He is employing 
the literary figures of the triumph of the mytho- 
logical Deliverer God. On the other hand, Paul’s 


1 The objection felt to this verse in its intended sense is ex- 
hibited in two ways: (1) The “ ascending,” which implied, as 
Paul says, an antecedent “ descending,’ was interpreted in the 
Targum as applying to Moses. (2) The statement that God 
mp> ‘took ” (tribute) among men was changed to port by 
transposition of letters, making it read ‘‘distributed spoils” 
among men. Paul adopts the latter but not the former. 


PAUL’S REVELATION AND FAREWELL 357 


reading is incorrect where he quotes “gave gifts 
unto men.” It is the alteration of the order of the 
letters in the Hebrew which transforms “ received 
gifts” to “ distributed spoils.” It leads Paul to the 
idea, as we see from the parallel passage in Colos- 
sians and the adoption of the Isaian description of 
God putting on his armor in vi. 11, of a triumphal 
march and the division of the spoils of victory. 
He may not have been influenced by the succeed- 
ing verses, which continue, ‘‘ Blessed be the Lord 
daily ; if one oppress us, God is our salvation, God 
is unto us a God of deliverances, and unto Jeho- 
vah the Lord belong the issues from death,” but 
he certainly conceives of God as fulfilling the part 
of the Geos cwryp in the avatar doctrine of the mys- 
teries. In the person of Christ, Paul maintains, God 
did ascend, for he previously descended even into 
the regions of the under-world. He led captive a 
train of redeemed captives, and when he seated 
himself upon his heavenly throne, he distributed 
to men the spoils of victory as conquerors do. 

The relation of this triumphal march of God in 
the person of Christ to the medieval church doc- 
trine of the Harrowing of Hell, as it appears in 
some forms of the Apostles’ Creed, I have already 
touched upon. It furnished a point for recrudes- 
cence of the old mystery myths; but I think even 
in Ephesians we are not quite back at the very 


358 THE STORY OF ST. PAUL 


foundations. Jewish apocalyptists were not content 
with the interpretation of the Targum. They had 
already been adapting the triumph ode of Ps. Ixviii. 
to this conception of Paul’s of God himself as the 
leader of Israel’s triumphal procession. In Eph. v. 
14 we have something more than conjecture, some- 
thing like positive evidence that Paul is using their 
work. 

I have already said that in Eph. i. 19-ii. 6 Paul 
illustrates the power of God by applying to the 
people of Christ, Jewish and Gentile, Ezekiel’s 
figure of the people raised from the dead by God’s 
Spirit in the valley of dry bones. This was a favor- 
ite in the times of the apocalyptic writers. The 
prayer referred to by Jesus as the “* Power of God,” 
the second Blessing of the so-called Shemoneh 
Esreh, or “ Eighteen Blessings,” applies it thus to 
Israel : — ; 

“Thou art mighty forever, O Lord, thou restorest life to 
the dead; thou art mighty to save ; who sustainest the liy- 
ing with beneficence, quickenest the dead with great mercy, 
supporting the fallen, and healing the sick, and setting at 
liberty them that were bound, and upholding thy faithfulness 
to them that sleep in the dust. Who is like unto Thee, 
Lord, the Almighty One; or who can be compared unto 
Thee, O King, who killest and makest alive again, and 


causest help to spring forth, and art faithful to quicken the 
dead.!_ Blessed art thou, O Lord, who restorest the dead.” 


1Cf£. Wisdom xvi. 12, 13, “Thy word [Logos], O Lord, which 


PAUL’S REVELATION AND FAREWELL 359. 


Now in Eph: v. 14 Paul quotes an unknown 
apocalyptic writing as follows: “ Awake, thou that 
sleepest, and arise from the dead, and the Messiah 
shall shine upon thee.” The ancient manuscript 
G has a marginal note which tells us that the 
quotation is taken from noch, in that case part of 
the unknown portions; but Epiphanius declares it 
to be from the Apocalypse of Elias, and this is 
not improbable, because we know from Origen that 
Paul’s quotation in 1 Cor. ii. 9 is from that writ- 
ing. Finally, the link of connection between Eph. 
i, 19-ii. 6, Eph. iv. 8-10, and Eph. v. 14, appears 
when we turn to a third apocalyptic fragment of 
unknown derivation, employed once by Justin Mar- 
tyr, and no less than five times by Ireneus. The 
fragment throws light upon the meaning of all its 
kindred : — 

“The Lord God remembered his dead people Israel, who 
lay in the graves ; and he descended to preach to them his 
own salvation.” 

It is attributed by Justin and Irenzus to vari- 
ous Old Testament authors ; but most significantly 
of all is connected by both! with Ps. Ixviii. 18, 
the very passage employed by Paul in Eph. iv. 
healeth all things; for thou hast authority over life and death, 
and thou leadest down to the gates of Hades, and leadest up again.”’ 
The passage in question underlies Jn. iii. 14, but also Jn. v. 21 ff. 


1 Justin, Dial. with Trypho, 87 ; Irenzeus, Her. III. xx. 4 (attrib- 
uted to “ Isaiah”), IV. xxii. 1 (attributed to “‘ Jeremiah ”’). 


360 THE STORY OF ST. PAUL 


8-10. In reality it is not a “Scripture,” but a mid- 
rash, or edifying paraphrase of Scripture, which 
interprets the triumphal ode Ps. lxviii. 18-21 much 
as Paul does, giving it the sense of the prayer called 
the “* Power of God” in the Shemoneh Esreh. It 
was the Lord God who descended to his dead people 
Israel. He came down to preach his own salvation 
to them. That, says this writer, is the meaning of 
the triumphal ode, with its declaration that God is 
unto us @ Deliverer God, and unto Jehovah the 
Lord belong the isswes from death. In the person 
of his Messiah he will descend, deliver his captive 
people, and distribute the spoil of their conquerors: 
‘«‘ Awake, thou people that sleepest, arise, daughter 
of Sion from the dead, and Messiah the Sun of 
Righteousness shall dawn upon thee.” 

Thus we have evidence that already in pre- 
Christian times Jewish apocalyptists had found a 
kind of avatar doctrine in Ps. Ixviii. 18-21, and 
spoke of God as ‘ coming down to deliver his peo- 
ple and raise them from the dead.” Accordingly 
the author of 1 Peter, whom we have already found 
to borrow appreciatively from Ephesians, and who 
also shows acquaintance with apocalyptic writings, 
appreciates the true sense. Paul means that God 
was in Christ effecting by his Spirit the resurree- 
tion of Christ and his people together, and the cos- 
mic “ reconciliation.” He that descended and as- 


PAUL’S REVELATION AND FAREWELL 361 


cended again, leading a triumphal train of released 
captives, was not Moses. The ode celebrates the 
avatar of Him who filleth all things by his Spirit 
of Wisdom.! In the self-oblation of Christ on the 
eross God triumphed over the principalities and 
powers (Col. ii. 15), and from heaven distributes 
to us their spoils. First Peter shows at least a par- 
tial appreciation by saying that in the life-giving 
Spirit of God, Christ went and “ preached the glad 
tidings to the spirits in prison which had been diso- 
bedient in the times of Noah,” when angels kept 
not their first estate but corrupted themselves dur- 
ing the long-suffering of God while the ark was 
preparing, so that the Gospel was proclaimed even 
to the dead. 

But I think Paul is influenced quite as much by 
a saying of Jesus, as by these speculative interpre- 
tations of Ps. lxviii. 18. Jesus, when accused of 
being in league with Beelzebul in his exorcism of 
evil spirits, replied that his exorcising them “ by 
the Spirit of God” was a proof of the advent of 
God to establish his kingdom. This proposition he 
illustrated by a parable which plays upon the word 
Beelzebul (“ Lord of the House”). Beelzebul, 
like a strong man armed, may keep his house, but 
when, unknown to him, the Stronger than he 
(God’s delivering Spirit) appears, he takes from 

1 Eph. iv. 10 ff.; ef, Wisdom i. 7; Ps. lxviii. 11, 17, 18 


362 THE STORY OF ST. PAUL 


the Prince of this world his belongings (freeing 
his slaves) and distributes his spoils. God in 
Christ as the spoiler of Beelzebul was, therefore, 
a theme as old as the Gospel itself. 

Moreover, independently of Paul, this applica- 
tion of the parable is made by the second century 
fathers, including Apollinaris of Hierapolis, who 
rhetorically refers to Jesus as the “Servant of 
God who, after having been bound, bound the 
Strong Man.” 

It is quite possibly, then, on the basis of Jesus’ 
reference to the Spirit of God by which he cast out 
the Strong Man and “ spoiled his house ” that Paul 
argues for a real avatar of God in the Psalm, 
God who “ filled all things ” by his divine Wisdom, 
and wrought redemption. For in the person of 
Christ he “ descended” to earth and (to borrow 
the language of Paul’s pupil) “ through death over- 
came him that had the power of death, that is the 
Devil, and delivered all those who through fear of 
death were all their lifetime subject to bondage.” 
This descent and ascent of God in Christ is, then, 
according to Paul, not only a spoiling of the Prin- 
cipalities and the Powers, and a leading of them 
in triumph through the cross, but effects a “ recon- 
ciliation of all things, whether things on the earth 
or things in the heavens ;” 1 for it makes the uni- 

1 Col. i. 20. 


PAUL’S REVELATION. AND FAREWELL 363 


verse a divine Pleroma, animated by his Spirit. 
The “ mystery’ of the Gospel is that in the “ fill- 
ing” of all things by God with the person of his 
redeeming, reconciling Son, God descended to the 
lowest depths, released the captives of the under- 
world, stripped off the armor from the Strong 
Man armed, led a triumphal procession up through 
all the seven heavens above, hierarchy after hier- 
arehy, to his own throne, and thence sent forth the 
Spirit which fills the Church with the divine life, 
the bond of perfectness, even love. 

Such is the strange background of the exhorta- 
tion in the second half of Ephesians to “put on 
the new Man.” 


“The gifts poured out from heaven make some apostles, 
some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors, and some 
teachers. All is for the perfecting of the saints, unto the 
building up of the cosmic organism, the Body of Christ. 
Ultimately, by increase of faith and knowledge, we shall be- 
come a full-grown Man, attaining the full dimensions of the 
Pleroma of Christ. Avoiding, then, the wiles of error, by 
truth spoken in the spirit of love, we should grow up into 

‘him who is the Head, that is, Christ, who supplies through 
all the avenues of the common organism the life-giving cur- 
rent of his Spirit. Each part then codperates to the build- 
ing up of the whole in love.” 


Here I must break off. Time forbids that I should 
speak further of the Logos doctrine of Paul, how 
it made conquest in the name of Jesus the Christ 


364 THE STORY OF ST. PAUL 


of the whole domain of Oriental mystery religion, 
Jewish apocalyptics, and Greek speculative cos- 
mology ; how Ephesians, containing as it did the 
fullest statement of Paul’s “ mystery,” exercised 
the greatest and most far-reaching influence of any 
of his Epistles, being earlier and more generally 
quoted and employed than any other, with the pos- 
sible exception of Romans and 1 Corinthians. 
Close study of the Fourth Gospel reveals how 
largely it has influenced the writer of that mar- 
velous Logos literature that comes to us under the 
name of “ John;” though we may well suspect 
that if we knew more of pre-Pauline apocalyptic 
Christology, we should find collateral development 
as well as direct dependence. But already we can 
appreciate the appropriateness of Ignatius’ con- 
gratulation of the Ephesian church, when, writing 
to them in A. p. 110-11T, he calls them cvppiora 
TlavAo#, « Paul’s fellow adepts in the mystery.” _ 

We must again pass over an interval of silence, 
how long we know not, to come to Paul’s parting 
words, a letter of farewell to his best-beloved 
church, and a spiritual testament to Timothy, his 
‘‘ child in the Gospel.” Philippians and 2 Timothy 
are written not far apart in date ; for the situation 
is practically identical, the end in both is imme- 
diately impending, and the outlook is expressed by 
exactly the same figure of speech: Paul’s blood is 


PAUL’S REVELATION AND FAREWELL 365 


about to be “ poured out a libation to God.”! In 
Phil. ii. 19, Paul was about to send Timothy to 
Macedonia. He was to come back and report to 
Paul their state, “ that I also may be of good com- 
fort ” (that is, as well as you Macedonians, whom 
I have been exhorting to “be of good comfort ’’). 
Three verses further on he says he hopes to send 
him “ forthwith, as soon as I shall see how it will 
go with me.” Paul accordingly did send him; but 
the news which Timothy carried was not in ac- 
cordance with Paul’s “ trust in the Lord that he 
himself would come shortly.”2 On the contrary, 
some other messenger carried to Timothy the last 
legacy of the Apostle. It was the bequest of his 
“trust” from the Lord, the gospel message with 
which he felt himself to have been “ entrusted,” as 
Israel of old —this Paul declares in Rom. iii. 2 to 
be Israel’s chief prerogative — had been.“ entrusted 
with the oracles of God.” ; 

These two farewell letters we must therefore 
take up, not knowing how long an interval has 
elapsed since the letters dispatched to the Lycus 
valley, but only that in the mean time the situation 
of the prisoner at Rome has visibly changed for 
the worse. 

Philippians is part of a correspondence in 
which there had been gifts of money from the 

1 Phil. ii. 17; 2 Tim. iv. 6. 2 Phil. ii. 24. 


366 THE STORY OF ST. PAUL 


chureh, and reciprocal acknowledgments by the 
captive Apostle. The go-between had been a cer- 
tain Epaphroditus, whom Paul calls affectionately 
“‘ my brother, and fellow worker, and fellow soldier, 
and your dzdcroAos [*messenger”] and Actroupyds 
[‘minister’] to my need.” The titles “ apostle” 
and “minister” (conductor of the worship) are 
bestowed in an affectionate word-play. Moreover, 
the road between Rome and Philippi had been 
traversed repeatedly back and forth; for first, 
Paul had been through a period of physical priva- 
tion on account of delay in their contributions,! to 
the extent of actual suffering from lack of food,? 
“not that they did not take thought for him, but 
that they lacked opportunity to send.”* Then 
Epaphroditus had been sent with an abundant 
gift, which, however, he was obliged in some way 
to risk his life to convey to Paul, probably by con- 
tinuing his journey in spite of the “ sickness nigh 
unto death” of ii. 26. Next, word had gone from 
Rome to Philippi of Epaphroditus’ illness — jour- 
ney number two. Then word had come from Phi- 
lippi to Paul that the Philippians were in anxiety 
for Epaphroditus — journey number three. This 
was an occasion of worry and distress to the con- 
1 ii. 30, iv. 10-12. 2 iv. 12. 


3 Doubtless a quotation from their letter of apology. 
* iv. 10, 18. 


PAUL’S REVELATION AND FAREWELL 367 


valescent, who “ longed after his Philippian friends, 
‘and was sore troubled at their having heard of his 
illness.” ! Now Paul is sending him back happily 
recovered by the mercy of God, who spared Paul 
this “sorrow upon some, other sorrow” (perhaps 
the turn for the worse in his own affairs 2) — 
journey number four. Thus there had been quite 
a correspondence. In fact, some account for the 
abrupt transition after Phil. i., ii., to a new sub- 
ject treated in an utterly different tone, and the 
unusual structure of this epistle, — which has one 
doctrinal section followed by a practical applica- 
tion and the usual paragraph devoted to personal 
matters,? then a second, unrelated doctrinal section 
Giii. 1-16), followed by a second practical applica- 
tion (iii. 17-iv. 9), and a second paragraph of 
personal business (iv. 10-23), — by supposing our 
epistle to be composite. There is nothing against 
this conjecture but the fact that the manuscripts 
make no division. And we have so repeatedly had 
occasion to see that the ancient editors were not 
careful to keep separate letters apart (cf. Rom. 
xvi.) that this is not a decisive reason. On the 
other hand, unless Phil. iii., iv., is really a separate 
letter, we must suppose that Paul allowed the news 
of Epaphroditus’ illness to be carried to Philippi, 


1 ii. 26. 2 Cf. iv. 14. 
8 j, 12-80, ii. 1-11, 12-18, 19-30. 


" 368 THE STORY OF ST. PAUL 


and yet neglected to acknowledge the gift and letter 
he had brought, leaving the Philippians uninformed ’ 
as to whether their gift had even reached him, until 
he had heard from them a second time. It is hard 
to believe that Paul was guilty of such discourtesy. 
Therefore I shall here assume that we have two 
letters of Paul to the Philippians joined together 
at ili. 1, the earlier letter comprising the last two 
chapters, the later the first two. 

The earlier letter (Phil. iii., iv.) does not mention 
the sickness of Epaphroditus, but only acknow- 
ledges the long-delayed gift.1 We know from the 
later letter ? that Epaphroditus had been very un- 
willing his illness should be reported; but the 
Philippians would naturally hear of it from the 
messenger. The doctrinal matter Paul writes about 
is the heresy of the legalists, Jews whom he de- 
nounces as ‘dogs, evil-workers, a concision ” (men 
who turn Jewish rites into heathenism). In iii. 18, 
19, he calls them “ enemies of the cross of Christ,” 
declares that “their end is perdition, their god 
is their own belly, their glory in their shame,” 
and that they “ mind earthly things.” These terms 
seem inappropriate to mere Judaizing Christians, 
who were scrupulous about the Law, and could 
not fully trust in the atonement of Christ without 
trying to supplement it by Mosaic observances. 

1 iy, 10-14. 2 ii, 26, 


PAUL’S REVELATION AND FAREWELL 369 


The latter class Paul speaks of as “ weak” breth- 
ren, and when they are not actively seeking to un- 
dermine his influence, denying his apostleship and 
gospel, and trying to make proselytes of Gentile 
believers, he shows the utmost gentleness and con- 
sideration toward them. There is not the slightest 
reason to think Paul felt his apostolic authority 
endangered in Philippi; it was the last place in 
which he could have anything to fear from the 
“ weak brethren,” or from denials of his apostle- 
ship, of which there is no trace here. Moreover, 
these denunciations are less characteristic of simple 
Pharisean legalists than of a very different type 
of Jewish propagandists, the same mongrel theoso- 
phists, in fact, who were.at work .in Colosse. The 
Colossians were bidden to “set their minds on 
things above, not on things on the earth.” These 
The Colossians were 


9 


men “mind earthly things. 
warned against men who had no appreciation of the 
doctrine of the cross, and God’s triumph in it over 
the “ Principalities and Powers;” the innovators 
taught them discriminations of meats and drinks, 
besides the Mosaic ordinances of feast-days, Sab- 
baths, new moons, and the like, mere dogmata of the 
«« Elements,” making the kingdom of God a matter 
of eating and drinking.! In the only real letter to 
Ephesus we possess (Rom. xvi.), Paul uses exactly 
1 Cf. Rom. xiv. 17. 


370 THE STORY OF ST. PAUL 


the same expression as here, “ Turn away from those 
who serve not our Lord Christ, but their own belly, 
and by their smooth and fair speech beguile the 
hearts of the innocent.” The warning to the Philip- 
pians is doubtless against a type of Judaizers, and 
advocates of salvation by the Mosaic ordinances ; 
else Paul would not cite against them his own turn- 
ing away from “ the righteousness which is after the 
Law ” to “that which is through faith in Christ ;” 1 
but the application to the doctrine of the resurree- 
tion, as the demonstration of God’s omnipotent 
power in us (Phil. iii. 10), reminds one so strongly 
of Ephesians and Colossians, and the characteriza- 
tion of the heretics implies so much more of hea- 
thenish superstition and carnality, that it seems 
more natural to suppose that Paul is thinking of 
this type of Jewish Christians rather than the type 
seen in Galatians. Possibly Phil. iii., iv., was writ- 
ten not long after the letters to the Lycus valley. 

It is characteristic of Paul that the exhortation 
with which he follows up this denunciation is an 
exhortation to unity. It is the “ peace of God” in 
their hearts which he longs to see (iv. 7), the 
“ God of peace ” to whom he commits them (iv. 9). 
Paul’s warfare is always to “ slay the enmity.” If 
there is such a thing as fighting for peace, he 
shows it. 

1 iii. 4-16. 


PAUL’S REVELATION AND FAREWELL 371 


And in his last farewell letter to this beloved 
church the “peace of God” is manifestly ruling 
in Paul’s own heart. The “ things which happened 
to him ” we are in the dark about. Clearly, to his 
Philippian correspondents they were far from pro- 
pitious ; but Paul teaches them to see the bright 
side. Some have been frightened, but most of the 
brethren have been rather emboldened. At all 
events, the whole Pretorium, in which Paul had 
made his defense, had heard the truth from him; 
and the salutations at the end of the letter include 
some from members of “ Czesar’s household.” True, 
there are false brethren in Rome too, who take ad- 
vantage of Paul’s confinement to “ preach Christ 
even of envy and strife, thinking to raise up afflic- 
tion for Paul in his bonds;” but they have a wrong 
estimate of the man. Paul does not “think of 
himself more highly than he ought to think,” nor 
regard the welfare of the Gospel as bound up with 
his fate. He may be a prisoner, but the word of 
God is not bound. While he was a free man he 
struggled manfully against these perverters of the 
truth. Now it is God’s will that he should preach 
no more. Then God knows best. ‘ In every way, 
whether in pretence or in truth, Christ is preached, 
and therein he rejoices and wil! rejoice.” As for 
the deposit intrusted to him, he is persuaded that 
God is able to guard it against that Day: as for 


372 THE STORY OF ST. PAUL 
himself, Christ will certainly be magnified in his 
body, whether by life or by death.! J 
Now although Paul does proceed after this to 
encourage and comfort his beloved Philippians, 
and even to express a confidence that God will let 
- him abide with them because he knows he is so 
much needed, it should be clear to every reader 
that the man who thus writes to grieving friends 
sees no earthly chance of escape. He does not give 
up trust in God. He expresses, on the contrary, 
absolute confidence that God will do what is best 
for his church. He tries to think, for the Philip- 
pians’ sake, that it clearly is best he should not be 
taken away; but what he prepares them for, and 
warns them of, is his “ departing and being with 
Christ, which is very far better.” They are “in 
nothing to be affrighted by the adversaries.” We 
have seen that the letter concludes with a promise 
to send Timothy as soon as he knows the decision 
which seals his fate. These facts are the best evi- 
dence we have on the question whether the Lycus 
valley letters come before or after Philippians. 
We can, of course, suppose that the verdict was 
favorable; but then why should Paul be stilla 
prisoner ; and why should nothing be said of so 
great a deliverance? If, however, it was unfavor- 
able, we shall understand why Phil. ii. 17 and 2 Tim. 
1 Phil. i. 18-20; cf. 2 Tim. i. 12. 


PAUL’S REVELATION AND FAREWELL 373 


iv. 6 answer so exactly to one another: “If I am 
poured out a libation,” and “I am now being 
poured out a libation.” The literature of the first 
two centuries has not a word, nor is there a feature 
of Paul’s case before Nero, to indicate that Rome 
ever would or did relax her cruel grasp upon him. 
Paul is not preparing the Philippians for a visit 
—his “ presence” —in this letter; but for his 
‘‘ absence,” and that forever. 

It is just this motive which introduces the brief 
doctrinal section of Philippians. The paragraph 
presents Paul’s last dying commendation of his gos- 
pel,—not for a polemic purpose, not for their 
increase in knowledge, but in love. And most 
touchingly, most characteristically noble is this 
supreme message of that great Apostle whom we 
have learned to call the Apostle of Faith, but ought 
to call the Apostle of Love : — 


So, then, my beloved, even as ye have always obeyed, not 
in my ‘ presence’ only, but now much more in my absence, 
work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, know- 
ing that it is God that worketh in you for his own gracious de- 
sign, cooperating with your very willing, as well as your doing.”’ 


Such is the exhortation. 

And what is the doctrine that sums up all Paul’s 
gospel? In the last letter, as in the first, Paul’s 
supreme loyalty is to the one new commandment, 
“the Law of Christ.” 


374 THE STORY OF ST. PAUL 


“Tf there be any comfort in Christ, any consolation of love, 
any fellowship of the Spirit, any tender mercies and com- 
passions, fulfil ye my joy that ye be of the same mind. .. . 
Have in you this mind which was also in Christ Jesus, who 
when he [like the first Adam] was ‘in the form of God’ did 
not [like the sinful pair in Paradise] count it a matter to be 
grasped at. with robber hand to be ‘as God,’ but emptied 
himself, taking the form not of Son but of Servant, being 
made in the likeness of men. And being found in outward 
form as a man, he exemplified the principle, ‘He that hum- 
bleth himself shall be exalted.’ For he became obedient unto 
death, yea, even the death of the cross. For which very rea- 
son God on his side ‘exalted’ him highly ; for he has given 
him in the Psalm the name Kdpwos, as Jesus himself testi- 
fied, ‘ The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit thou at my right hand, 
till I make thine enemies the footstool of thy feet.? And now 
shall they indeed bow the knee to Jesus’ Name, creatures on 
earth, yes, and in the regions of Death and Hades under 
the earth, and all hierarchies of angelic Powers in heaven. 
For every tongue of men and angels shall confess that Jesus 
is Lord to the glory of God the Father.” 


Is it an avatar doctrine? It is humanity’s 
aspiration for a “ Saviour-God” taken up and glo- 
rified by permeation with the Law of him who 
‘came not to be ministered unto but to minister, 
and to give his life in redemption of the many.” 
Does it employ mythology? Over against the 
Adam of Jewish fable it places a Second Adam, a 
spiritual Man from heaven, whom to “put on,” 
whose mind to “ have in us,” is to realize all that 
mystery religion sought by the “enthusiasm” of 


PAUL’S REVELATION AND FAREWELL 375 


its Saviour-God. Over against the descent and as- 
cent, the incarnation and apotheosis, of the hero, it 
puts the redeeming Wisdom of God, loving and 
restoring, incarnate in Jesus Christ, victorious over 
sin and death, triumphant at the right hand of 
God. Yes, mythology is there, the pathos and 
prayer of a world groping after God; but it is 
mythology come true. Such ig Paul’s farewell to 
his “ beloved,” a supreme appeal not to doctrine, 
not to miraculous power, but to the spirit of love. 
We have but one brief fragment more, Paul’s 
testament, wherein he delegates to Timothy the 
“trust” which had been committed to him. Not 
all the epistle we designate 2 Timothy is authentic, 
and, as we have seen, some of that which is authen- 
tic belongs probably to an earlier date. The so- 
called Pastoral Epistles, in the form in which we 
have them, contain in fact mere fragments of 
Pauline material, fragments so slight in the case 
of 1 Timothy and Titus, and so mingled with 
later elements, that it is scarcely worth while to 
try to extricate them, or to define the occasion of 
Paul’s life to which they should be assigned. But 
1 The winter Paul proposes in Titus iii. 12 to spend in Ni- 
copolis (Epirus) is probably the winter actually spent in Cor- 
inth before the last journey to Jerusalem. Titus came indeed to 
Corinth, — whence we know not,—and thence joined Paul in 


Macedonia; but the unexpectedly favorable turn in affairs at 
Corinth (largely due to Titus) enabled Paul to spend the winter 


376 THE STORY OF ST. PAUL 

a large proportion of critics recognize in 2 Timothy 
a greater element of authentic Pauline matter, and 
in particular those portions of chapter iv. not already 
identified as written from Cesarea. What can be 
thus identified is sufficient to indicate the date and 
character of the writing as that which I have already 
defined it to be, a farewell message to Timothy, 
intrusting him, as Paul’s “ beloved child,” with the 
only legacy he could give — his gospel. 

It is later than Philippians ; for not only was 
Timothy then with Paul, — very shortly to be sent 
Greecewards with further news, whereas now he ap- 
pears to be in Ephesus, — but the situation of Paul 
shows only the darker alternative of Phil. i. 21-30. 
Demas, who in Philemon and Colossians is still 
faithful, has now forsaken Paul, “ having loved 
this present world.” Phygelus and Hermogenes, 
with “all that are in Asia ”— persons of whom 
we can only see that Timothy is expected to know 
who was meant — also turned away from Paul. He 
has heard, too, probably by letter from Timothy, 
of the death of Onesiphorus, an Ephesian, who when 


there instead of at Nicopolis. Titus was sent on to Corinth before 
him. The genuine elements of Titus (iii. 12 f.) suggest that Paul 
was writing from Ephesus. 

So large a proportion of 1 Timothy comes from the later hand 
that perhaps very slight importance attaches to the date and 
occasion of the genuine elements. Fromi. 3 a date slightly later 
than Titus (Troas, just before 2 Corinthians ?) might be inferred. 


PAUL’S REVELATION AND FAREWELL 377 


in Rome had visited and refreshed him, unashamed 
of his chain. Condolences are sent to the family, 
and greetings to them and to Aquila and Prisca. 
This is about all we can make out of the situation, 
and the inferences to be drawn from it allow us to 
see only the progressive darkening of the prospect. 
The “things which happened ” to Paul, which in 
Phil. i. 12-14 had led to the desertion of only a 
few, have had much more serious effect now on 
Paul’s adherents, even to his immediate circle. To 
Timothy he turns as to the one genuinely devoted, 
disinterested servant of Christ. Besides the warn- 
ings of the epistle against heresy, much of which is 
probably later interpolation, we catch the old Pau- 
line ring where the writer speaks of his “ gospel 
according to the power of God.” We are reminded 
again of Ephesians as he continues: ** Who saved 
us, and called us with a holy vocation, not accord- 
ing to our works, but according to his own Purpose ; 
the grace which was given us in the person of 
Christ Jesus before times eternal, but hath now 
been manifested by the ‘shining forth’? of our 
Saviour Christ Jesus, who abolished death, and 
brought life and incorruption to light through the 

1 Phil. ii. 19-21. 

2 The Epiphany (émipavela), a new term for Paul, who uses the 
ordinary one, Parousia, in the earlier epistles. The transition to 


this expression (smacking of mystery religion) is very plain in 
Eph. y. 14; the idea appears in 2 Cor. iv. 6. 


378 THE STORY OF ST. PAUL 


Gospel.” You will find no difficulty in appreciat- 
ing these ideas of i. 9, 10, since our treatment of 
them in Ephesians, though there is here a differ- 
ence of phraseology. The real sense of verses 12— 
14 must be, as we have seen : — 


“Tam not put to shame by the malefactor’s fate which 
Iam made to suffer, because I know him in whom I have 
put my trust, and I am convinced that he is able to guard 
in safety till the day of Christ’s coming to judgment, the 
Deposit he committed to me. [Hold the pattern of sound 
words which thou hast heard from me in faith and love 
which is in Christ]. Guard thou that good Deposit through 
the Holy Ghost which dwelleth in us.” 


We may pass over the special warnings and 
personal injunctions of the epistle, some of which 
seem to be later interpolations,? and come to the 
parting exhortation ; for in these solemn words of 
farewell we have the last echo of the Apostle’s 
voice, as he sets his brave face toward the scaf- 
fold : — 


“T charge thee, in the sight of God and of Christ Jesus, 
who shall judge the living and the dead, and by his shining 
forth [Epiphany] and his kingdom ; preach the word, be tire- 


1 Verse 13 is probably interpolated. 

2 Tt is hard to see what relation ii. 20-26 bears to the context, 
and surely it contains most superfluous advice for Timothy, warn- 
ing him to “ flee youthful lusts,” as if Paul, in addressmg him 
as “ my beloved child ” (i. 1), had meant to imply that he was a 
boy in years. These verses sound like the moral requirements 
of ecclesiastical discipline in the later church manuals. 





. PAUL’S REVELATION AND FAREWELL 379 


less in season and out of season. . . . Be thou sober in all 
things, suffer hardship, do the work of an evangelist, fulfil 
thy ministry. For I am already being poured out a libation 
to God, and the time of my departure is come. I have fought 
the good fight, I have run the race to its goal, I have main- 
tained the faith: henceforth there is laid up for me the 
crown of righteousness which the Lord, the righteous judge 
[reversing the decision of the bloody tyrant here], shall give 
to me, at the day of his coming. And not to me alone, but 
also to all those who have loved his shining forth.” 


The Story and the Epistles of St. Paul are both 
to us revelations of God’s propagation of the Gos- 
pel. The outward narration by its character and 
purpose is more than a colorless record of what 
the great Apostle did. Acts shows what it gives 
of Paul’s career as part of a world-movement, of 
which the author’s own composition and its con- 
stituent elements form also part. The Epistles, 
too, are far more than a colorless exposition of 
Paulinism. They are photographs of mental con- 
ditions (not Paul’s only but those of his readers, 
and even his rivals and antagonists) in that mar- 
velous time when the national religions of the world 
had broken down, and out of the confusion that 
supreme type of personal religion which we call 
“the Gospel” was drawing to itself the elements 
of truth from Jewish and Gentile sources, infus- 
ing and quickening them with the Spirit of Jesus. 
Not “ That which is Scriptural” was Paul’s motto, 









but “ Whatsoever things are true, wh 
are i whatsoever things a 


if there be any virtue, if there He any pre 
Gamaliel the teacher had been the great | 

narian of the Synagogue. Paul the pupil, 
greater Master, shows himself, among other 
things, the great latitudinarian of the Chi zh s 


1 Phil. iy. 8. 





INDEX OF SUBJECTS AND AUTHORS 


Axssort, T. K., Comm. on Eph— 
Col., 331. 

Abomination of Desolation, 245. 

Acts, ill-informed, 89f., 162 £.; 
attitude on the Law, 115, 125 ; 
reticence of, 68f., 82, 126, 
175; silence on Paul’s end, 
217. 

Acts of John, 332. 

Acts of Paul, 225. 

Agabus, 154. 

Alpha and Omega, 79. 

Altercatio Simonis et Theophili, 
50. 

Ananias, 47, 48, 92. 

Andronicus, 187. 

Angelology and demonology, 
330 £ 


Antichrist, 245, 250. 

Antioch in Pisidia, 103, 152. 

Antioch in Syria, 87, 93, 94, 
110 #f., 136 #., 154, 174. 

Apocalypse, 320 ff. 

Apocalypse of Baruch, 74, 248, 
250, 252, 322, 325, 348. 

Aeecolapre of Elias, 276, 346, 


Apolo, 266, 315 ; adherents of, 
271. 


Apostles, earlier, 71. 

Apostleship of James et al., 83. 

Apostleship of Paul, 83, 253. 

Aquila and Prisca, 168, 172f., 
180, 229, 377. 

Aretas, 87. 

Aristeas, Epistle of, 164. 

Ae Apology of, 164, 166, 
59. 

Assumptio Mosis, 262, 276, 
347 £., 356. 

oo doctrine of Paul, 





Avatar doctrine, 314, 328 f., 
337 £., 341, 345, 353, 355, 374. 


Bacon, Introduction to N. T., 
191, 231; Stephen’s Speech, 17, 
262. 

Baptism a type of death, 140, 
294. 

Barnabas, 69, 82, 84, 90, 94, 140. 

Barnabas, Epistle of, 50, 351. 

Basilides, 342. 

Beelzebul, 327, 361. 

Book of the Dead, 344. 

Bousset and Gunkel, Forschun- 
gen, 25. 

Browning, The Epistle, 22. 


Cesarea, 204 ff. 

Calendar, 173, 262. 

Charismata, 281. 

Chase, Credibility of Acts, 74, 
85, 128. 

Cheetham, Mysteries, 342-344. 

Christology, of Paul, 75-77, 208, 
ee 306, 326 f.; of Peter, 
77. 

Cireumcision, 150. 

Clement Al., Strom., 22. 

Clement of Rome, 215, 223, 268. 

Clementine Homilies, 14, 37, 126, 
134, 190. 

Colossians, 303 ff., 330 ff. 

Concision, 207, 368. 

Contrast of Acts and Epistles, 


10-12. 
Contribution for Jerusalem, 
183 #., 192. 
Conversion of Paul, 36-49, 69. 
aa 168, 267 ff. 
orinthian correspondence 
268 #. se ; 
Cornelius, 48, 86, 90, 123. 


384 INDEX OF SUBJECTS AND AUTHORS 


Cosmology in Greek and He- 
brew thought, 313. 


Damaseus, 46-49, 53, 87. 

Decrees of Jerusalem, 130. 

Deissmann, Bible Studies, 178, 
231, 235, 239. 

Diary, or Travel, or We-docu- 
ment, 102, 153, 156 ff., 182, 
186, 210, 214. 

Diatessaron of Tatian, 5. 


Early career of Paul, 87-89. 
Elements of the world, 325 f., 


369. 

Elymas, 102, 177, 190. 

Enoch, 250, 317, 359. 

Enoch, Slavonic or Secrets of, 
276, 344, 345. 

Epaphras, ’300. 

Epaphroditus, 366 ff. 

Ephesian letters, 178. 

Ephesians, 299 ff. 

Ephesus, 174 ff. 

Epiphany for Parousia, 377. 

Epistle to Diognetus, 164, 259. 

Epistles, primary sources of the, 
5-9. 


Epistles vs. letters, 231. 
Epistolary forms, 236 f. 
Eschatology, Pauline, 241 ff. 
Esdras, doctrine of Fall in, 64. 


Famine, Claudian, 96. 
Felix, 194 f., 205. 


Galatia, South and North, 99, 
175, 266. 

Galatian churches, defection in, 
1738, 230; founding of, 97-100. 

Galatians, 252 ff. 

Gallio, 168 f. 

Gamaliel, 14, 16, 20, 380. 

Gentiles, Gospel for, 79, 81. 

Gnosticism, 176, 299. 

Gospel of Peter, 332. 

Gunkel and Bousset, Forschun- 
gen, 25. 


Hagar and Sarah, 263. 
Harrowing of Hell, 341, 357. 





Hausrath, History of N. T. 
Times, 19, 99. 

Heirship of ‘Christ, 261. 

Helena of Adiabene, 95. 

Hellenists, 85, 107, 110. 

Heraclitus, 65, 273, 313. 

Hees Vis., Mand., Sim., 325, 


Hilgenfeld, Zts. f. w. Th., 139, 

Hippolytus, Philos., 342. 

Historical and Critical Contribu- 
tions (Yale), 17%, 262. 

Hitzig on 2 Thess. ii. 7, 249. 

a 0., Nil. Zeitgesch., 
87. 

ie 


Conese eresies, oly se 7, 359. 
James, 109 ff., 122, 141, 187, 190, 
206. 


Jerusalem Conference, 110, 
112 ff., 126 £.; decrees, 112 ff., 
188. 

Jewish Christians, 71. 

Johannine disciples, 174, 180. 

Jubilees, 165. 

Judaizers, of Corinth, 287; of 
Galatians, 256. 

Justin Martyr, Dialogue, 359. 


Kerygma Petri, 166 £., 259. 
Kosher meat, 130. 


Law of Moses, an enactment of 
angels, 259; obligatory, 114, 
131 f£., 257, 294, 

Life and Letters of St. Paul 
(Conybeare and Howson), 19. 

Lightfoot, Comm. on Gal., 125; 
St. Paul and Seneca, 60, 260. 

Logia of Oxyrhynchus, 317. 

Logos doctrine, '273,311f.,316£., 
328 £., 330 f£., 345, 350. 

Lucht, Zts. Sf. w. Th., 121, 195, 
198. 

Luke, purpose of, 45, 168, 186. 

Luther at Rome, 42. 


Maccabees, Fourth, 57. 


Magic, 178. 


INDEX OF SUBJECTS AND AUTHORS 385 


Malta, 212. 

Mark, 94, 106. 

Martyrdom of Paul, 217, 221. 

Martyrdom of Polycarp, 203. 

McGiffert, Apostolic Age, 148, 
180. 

Messianism, Petrine, 71. 

Miletus, 218. 

Ministry of the new Covenant, 
290. ° 

Mission of the Twelve, 80. 

Mysteries, 306 ff., 335. 


Neronic persecution, 248 f. 
Onesimus, 219, 300, 303 f. 


** Painful letter,’’ 284 ff. 

Paradise, visited by Paul in vi- 
sion, 89. 

Pastoral Epistles. 
and Titus. 

Persecution, Pharisean and Pau- 
Tine, 54; Sadducean, 16, 54. 

Peter, 48, 85 f., 129, 135 £., 144, 
161; adherents of, 271; in 
Rome, 223. 

Pfleiderer, Urchristenthum, 24, 
97, 99, 105, 109, 128. 

Philemon, 220, 300, 302 f. 

Philip, 84. 

Philippi, 160. 

Philippians, 364 ff. 

Philo, 30-82, 273. 

Philosophy, its effect on heathen 
belief, 311. 

Pillar Apostles, 122 ff., 144, 
172. 

FPleroma doctrine, 316, 324, 338, 
349, 355. 

Pliny, Ep. ad Traj., 150. 

Plots to kill Paul, 202. 

Pollutions of idols, 133, 1389, 152, 
269, 277. 

Preaching of Peter. See Keryg- 
ma Petri. 

Pre-Pauline Christianity, 4, 55 £. 


See Timothy 


Ramsay, St. Paul, Church in 
Empire, ete., 100, 116, 156, 
159, 193, 211. 








Resurrection-body, 282. 
Rome, 215, 224. 
Romans, 292 ff. 


Sabatier, The Apostle Paul, 21. 

Sadducean persecution, 16, 54. 

Saviour-God, 66, 309 £.,321, 3338, 
335, 388, 340, 355, 360, 374. 

Sceva, sons of, 177. 

Schiirer, History of the Jewish 
People, 19, 99. 

Self-commendation of Paul, 286. 

Seneca, De Benef., 60, 66; Ep. 
Mor., 62, 66, 259; quoted by 
Lactantius, Div. Inst., 22. 

Servant, of Deutero-Isaiah, 58, 
74, 76. 

Shemoneh Esreh, 358, 360. 

Sibylline Oracles, 250. 

Silas, 146, 148, 229. 

Simon Magus, 102, 177, 190, 274. 

Slavonic Secrets of Enoch. See 
Enoch. 

Smith, James, Voyage and Ship- 
wreck, 211. 

Son of man as title, 76. 

Stephen, 84, 107; vision of, 17, 

- 262. 

Stoicism, influence on Paul, 21, 
60, 260, 281, 310. 

Strong and weak brethren, 131, 
296, 369. 

Suetonius, Lives of the Emperors, 
87. 

Supernatural vs. miraculous vs. 
providential, 51, 52. 

Synagogue worship, 234. 

Syria and Cilicia, 88-93. 


Tarsus, Paul’s boyhood in, 19, 
20. 

Teaching of the Twelve Apostles, 
83, 165. 

Temple, blasphemy against, 57, 
108. ; 

Tennant, Fall and Original Sin, 
8, 63. 

Gevs cwryp. See Saviour-God. 

Thessalonica, 162. 

Thessalonian Hpistles, 288 ff. 

Timothy, 149, 229 ; First Epistle 





Visio Isaie, 339, 341, 351. 
Vision of Paul, 3943, 201. 
Vision of Peter, 48. 


INDEX TO SCRIPTURE REFERENCES 


Genesis 


Leviticus 
Deut. 


2 Samuel 
Psalm 


2 Esdras 


Wisdom 


OLD TESTAMENT 


Tel ee ers el Ose sale 
5 RS) 8 ones 50 
iAP. 166, 276 
15 2G sete ‘276, 325 
i. 26-28 . 262, 322, 
348 | Proverbs 
1 2ON e: 130 
ixe Jens 130 
Te igd ett i- 113 
xvil., Xviil. . 113 
babi seme 54 | Isaiah 
xxix. 18. 133 
xxx. 12-14 317 
Exiles, 4.) . 50 
viii. . 327, 328, 353 
viii. Ge - 262, 325 
xxiv. 8 . 9843 | Jeremiah 
xlvii. 5, 8 341 | Ezekiel 
Tvii. 11 : 411 | Malachi 
Dyas. 249, 250, 
383, 356, 358 
APOCRYPHA 
vic Olt sma 248 | Wisdom 
vi. 24,25. . 248 
vi. 55-59 262, 325, 
348 
vii. 11 348 
vii. 48-50 62 
viii. 80-36 62 
ix.1-8 . 248 
Tels 248 
i. 4, 12-16 62 
eG Wt 273 
POM ee OLE 
17 . 312, 331, 338, 
355, 3861 
v. 17-238. 840 
vi. 13. 278 


Ixyiii. 18-21 . 333, 
334, 338, 341, 356, 
359-361 
CX: igs .- 3853 
ex. 1. S35 6! 
i. 20-33 shi 7/ 
viii. 22 = SE 
viii. 1-21 «Lake 
viii. 22-31 . 847 
ix. 3-6 . 23 
v9. oy MELE 
vi. 9,10 + LOL 
xxvii. 13 .342,343 
sli. 1 cee 
lix. 17 340 
rey © 6 55, 56 
i 5 25, 26 
XXXVil 353 
Ty Zeon 50 
vi. 18-16 . 317 
vii. 17-22 . 275 
vii. 17-28 346 
vil. 24 . 331 
vii. 22-80 273 
vill. 3, 4 273 
viii. 4 275 
ix. 4, 6, 9-11 317 
ix. 15 62 
x. 15 273 
Doss 165, 167 
xiii. 1-10 165 
xiy. 21-28 165 
Kv: See 165 
xy. 18-xix. 22. 165 
xvi. 5-13 832 


388 INDEX TO SCRIPTURE REFERE 

Wisdom xvi 12,18. . 858|Eeclus. -aaaeeeeee 
xviii. 15, 16 . 325, 332 xxiv, 6218 § 

Ecclus. xxiv. 1-22. . 273|Baruch iii. 28-37 2738, 

NEW TESTAMENT 

Matthew  xi.28-80 . . Siqiiem ese 


Xx. OL uae ix. 6-30 
xxiii. 34-39 . 317 Ee 
xxiv.. . . 16, 245 ix. 12 
REV ES 5) 20d ix. 15 
Mark Vil, £9. ye ueleo ix. 29 
KU. is) ee 10, eee ix. 30 5 
xili. 7, 8, 14-20, ix. 32-xi. 1 
24-27." . . 246 4 
xv AOA OS SO x. 9-16 . 
Luke 454 lle ys seen x. 4447 
% TS + BO xi. 1-3 
m1,'415) ou. eo lee xi-xy. . 
=u 4902. « te xi. 1-18. 
xi. 49-51 . . 317 
xi. 84-35. . 317 xi. 19-30 
es xi. 20 
2 3 ek xi. 28 
xxiv. 26, 217, xii. 5-11 
» Wie ao xii. 11 
John 3. 1-55) fhe xiii., Xiv. 
iii. 14 332, 359 ‘ 
Vide: ee wooo xin, 3/93 
X.—-xiii. . . 214 xiii. 1-3. 
xi. 48 201 xiii. 6-11 
xil. Gi.) 193 parity iii 
xxi. 18-19 225 xiii. 16-41 
Acts TAS in ty Ae ocak xili. 27-37 
i.-v. oh De xii. 39 . 
ii. 14-21 256 xiii. 45-48 
li. 25-32 76 xiii. 50 
jy. 1-2 . 201 xiv. 1 
v. 13-26 201 xiv. 2, 5, 1 
Verhnch Ls . 169 xiv. 14-17 103, 167 
v. 19-42 160 f. xiv. 21 
5 Ae Ge 203 Xv. 
vii. 56. AMG: 
viii. 14-24. . 256 xv. 1-12, 5-29 
viii. 18-24. . 190 xv: Tous 
VEZ Satis EOD xy. 8. 
iii Be yes xy. 20- 
ix, 11, 47, 82, 92, 
200, 210 xy. 33, 
ix. 1-xi. 18 91 xvi. 4 





Acts 


xvi.10-18. . 10 
xvi. 23-39 . 161 
xvii. 5, 13 202 
xvii. 14. . 162, 229 
xyii. 18-31 SiG 
xvii. 18-34. . 1638 
xvii. 22-31 . 156, 168 
xv 26) 00 eo. Dd 
xvid) . |. 164 
xviii. +4 =, 152 
xviii. 1-17 187 
xvii.S . 169 
xvii.9 . . 199 
xviii. 9,10 171 
xviii. 12 = 2OZ 
xvii. 22 193 
SV oh. s | cd 
m8, 9. 179 
xix. 23-41 . 180 
Rx: ss 202 
xix. 33, 34. 198 
oso eee 202 
$e to ae 198 
ps yas ly (ae 183 
xx. 5-xxi. 18 11 
ee Ge ss 156 | Romans 
To ANS 157 
xx. 18-35 . 156 
ee 2S) 183 
x34 . 183 
xxi.1-5. 157 
xxi. 1-18 183 
a Dy 182 
xxi. 8 OG 
=. 20) > 109 
xxi. 20-24 . 108 
Ee. 123 
xxi. 24 . 109,114 
xxi. 26 . - 150 
posting . 199 
eee OO. 921 197 
pS Tike og 91, 210 
52-21 hal hee 210 


Sek AG 


xxii. 11 199 
REE =~. 189 
xxiii. 26-30 203 
xxiv. 2-8 203 
xxiv. 10-21 203 
xxiv. 17. 184 


INDEX TO SCRIPTURE REFERENCES 


389 
muv.J8. . . 199 
xxiv. 23. - 204 
SRT VeIAt). «) came 204: 
xxy. 7-11 - 196 
xxy. 23-27. . 196 
52 ee 92, 117 
xxvi. 1-23 . 156 
xxvi. 10. Ba oid 03107 
xxvi. 14. 46, 47 
xxvi.16-18 . 47 
xxvi. 17-23 . 156 
XxvE 22,23 . 240 
REVI 2 = 2) ee 
xxvi. 31,32 . 196 
xxvii. l-xxyiii. 16, 
11 
mxvan. 2. . 7’) s. SOe 
Vito)... e oro 
xxvii. 21-26 . 156 
xxyn.44 . . 252 
xxvii. . 174, 215 
xxviii. 8. on) kOe 
xxviii. 15 159 
xxvii. 17 157 
xxviii. 25-28 104 
xxviii. 30 204 
i. 16-ii. 16 167 
i. 18-ii. 16 168 
i. 21-23 165 
i. 23 166 
4 . . 167 
pire 222, 365 
iui. 24 .. 164 
iv. 13 262, 325 
Wil.) &. - 56 
vii. 7-11 . . 59 
vill. 19-22, 38, 
3g iris eS 
ixxi. . . 28,248 
1.25 |, o> ees 
ix. 25,26 . 219 
x.6,7 ... 2BSSl6 
x. 6,9 whet ese 
xii.—xv Tee ele 
xiv. 6 130 
xiy. 17 . 369 
xy. 14-33 296 
. 16 221 
xy. 19 215 
xv. 20 93 
xy. 25-28 97 


390 INDEX TO SCRIPTURE 


Romans xv.28 . . . 223)2 Cor. 
xvi. .174, 181, yo 
369 





xvi. 1-16 296 
xvi. 1-20 . 296 
xvi. 17-20 . 297 
xvi. 21-23 . 296 
xvi. 25-27 . 296 
1 Cor. Soave lois 271 
IZ 232 
i. 2 b. 234 
i. 24 208 
TE} 4 ist tare aomes Lee 
ii. 6-16. 208, 316, 
346, 347, 348 
TE Os = Mi eee 0 
11.9 . 209-210, 325, 
359 ie 
iii. 22 . 325 269, 
iv.6. . 272 201 
Visi . Za 270 
V.-vii. He eae 270 
v9. 267, 272 . 291 
v.10. . 268 vii. oe ee 
ve La: 2 ii ee 
vi.3. 208, 262 i a! 
vi. 19. - 210 ii. 1 ewe 
vii. 1. 270 viii. 9. . 208, 318 
viii. . 278 vill. 16-24. . 4 
vili.—x. 140, 277 vii. 18-21 . . 1 
yiii. 6 208, 318 ix.xnL.s 2) gies 
Toh et ee 279 ix. 1-5 «. 5 Gee 
TX yous Pas 283 XX eee tier 
x45), 208,318 x. 1-xiii. 10. 5 
x. 14-22. 130 Pook 
OOF 130 =xi'4 Ae oe 
xi 271 xi. 15). 5) ee 
xil., Xiv. 280 ‘si, 23-3: A a 
xiv. 3 155 xi. 25-2, 0 OS ee 
xiv. 16 234 xi. '82, 83° . (2 SC 
vos 282 xi. 1-4: 3 80a 
xy.3. 55, 293 xii. 14-18 . . 193 
xm. 264. 325 xii. 18 . - 
KV. 32 180 xili, 11-14 . . 286, © 
xu Se bh 22 291 — 
Viel ties 266 | Gal. i,1 seus ee 
xvi. 5-9. 289 i. 6-10). ). eee 
2 Cor. as: pe eke SO 1.9. 20. ) ee 
i-ix. 267, 284-286 i. 10°. «... eee 
6-1) LW ee eo i 10=v.41 Soo 


INDEX TO SCRIPTURE REFERENCES 391 


Gal. 


B15 % 25,68 | Ephesians ii1.1-13. .354, 349 
rte 15-17 . aa: ie 2 oh ce OS 
Hee ced «toe LOS Th 03 ge 301 
Ty De ie oe Lee 11,1421 . . 3387 
22-04. . . 88 iv.. . . 004,338 
ii. 1-10, 116, 125, iv.-vi. 338, 339, 355 
126 iv.8 . 7319, 341 

ie Des reed 03 iv. 8-10 isk te OU 
i. 4 106, tt don iv.9 . . 817, 341 
ii. T- we 128 iv. 10 ff.. 361 
hie DE geey ci shy LOS iv. 13 332 
IPO se ae 129 iv. Fad 241 
1-40-21... 82 eos 
Welder hh 129 Vv. ee , 209, 358, 359, 
ii. 11-23 116, 136 377 
ii. 12 . 129, 189, 136 vi. 10-17 340 
ii. ca a: See 808 Vis ee) lot ene 
Teet2y 1S a) 1 8G vi. 21. . 236, 801 
Tels) Oe e290 Phil: Tie ee 367 
Tie eet! ey 3 200 i. 12-14. 377 
Sisles © cece omy OD i. 12-30. 367 


Ephesians 


riers 259 
ii. 10 115 
ii. 19 259 
tye ge et oy Ol 
iv.-vii. 294 
weit. 259 
iv. 3, 8-11 . 319 
iv. 4 208 
iy. 8 + 840 
iv. 13 99, 100, 149 
iv. 14. 39 

LysMlOniren «De 
HVelGtore «Ue ke 
wee 264 
Weis 149 
OTe crest 1. ALO 
¥. 20); amr 209 
i.-ill. 238, 350, 354 
risgil Ltee (Zoe 
i. 3-14 348, 351 
Lo os ots 
i.9 ee Ons 
i. 10, 11 5 65) 
Tbe. . 349 
ib. 301, 336 
i. 19-i1.10 . 355 
i. 19-ii. 6 858, 859 
Bey 331 
iii. 1 337 


29 | Colossians i. 7 


i,18-20. . . 312 
roger J) ao AD 
Te RODD fa A 
ela) £ See 
.17. . .365,372 


Wiss . 3866 
ui. 19-21. 7 OnE 
i. 24. . 865 
i 26% 366-368 
ii. 30. 24 e806 
lit, ives. | SOngoGsy 
370 

itis dh). 368 
im: 1-65. ..5 386% 
in 410. 5) eo 
ii.4-16. . . 370 
il, 10." . 370 
iii. 17-iy. 9. 367 
iii. 18,19 368 
Peet lero « 310 
LV."O0 Sg 380 
LV Oh cles 370 
iv. 10-12 366 
iv. 10-14 368 
iy. 10, 18 366 
iv. 10-23 367 
Tyl2) 2 er ooo, 
Lv chide am OOU 
Live Los 1 Gree «hele 
oats 300 


392 INDEX TO SCRIPTURE REFERENCES 


Colossians i. 9 


1 Thess. 


2 Thess. 


1 Tim. 


. 801]1 Tim. vi.'20) |». 2 ce 
. 862|2 Tim. i.9,10 . . oa 
301 iL O-14 |. 6S ee 
835 i. 12°27 /.5 2 ee 
835 i, 12-14),.°.. 2 ee 
300 i138. oi) 6 A 
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